


Musikalische Exequien

by Reynier, secace



Series: Triptych [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universes, Dark Comedy, Dimension Travel, M/M, Minor Character Death, in general just a lot of jokes about murder, references to suicidal thoughts, uhhhh theres sex but its not actually described
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:41:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29315763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier, https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: Gawain raised his hand, remembered this was a conversation, lowered it, and said, “If we’re taking the place of an alternate Gawain and Lancelot, are those dimensions’ Gawain and Lancelot taking our place here?”“Yes, but I’ll keep them locked in my dungeon.”Lancelot and Gawain get stuck dimension-hopping.
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Series: Triptych [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153427
Comments: 16
Kudos: 12





	1. I. Concert in Form einer teutschen Begräbnis-Messe

**Author's Note:**

> hiiiiiiiii our lives are falling apart and we went feral and wrote this in like a week. stan lancelot <3 
> 
> also the chapter titles (and main title obv) are the three parts of heinrich schutz' musikalische exequien, aka "funeral music." theres no thematic meaning to this i (rey) just love heinrich schutz and he (lou) enabled me. ch 1 is "concert in the form of a german funeral mass"

“You look stressed,” said Sebile one day. She had shown up out of nowhere, as she often did, to perform a Lancelot check, as was her wont. And she had found him lurking in Guinevere’s botanical garden, staring gloomily at a dahlia. As it happened he was not in a _terrible_ mood; that was just his face, but the shadows under his eyes were clearly evident. She sat down beside him on a stone bench and peered at him with a clinical air. “You need a break.”

“Hi Sebile,” he said, instead of answering. “This is my least favourite flower, I think.” 

Obediently, she turned to look at it. “I think it’s pretty. It’s got tons of layers. Good colour too. Your flower opinions are terrible. Have you gotten really drunk recently? I think it would help.”

He considered this, not because he thought it was a good suggestion but because it was polite to pretend it may be. “First and second hand experience does not suggest that, no.” 

“What about some good killing?” She pursed her lips at him. “You love killing.”

“That’s true,” he said, perking up a bit. “Do you have someone who needs to be killed?” 

Sebile looked up at the sky briefly as though to be sure God wasn’t watching, and said, “I didn’t, really, but you could just— no, you’re right, that would cause trouble. If only I could feed you human blood and turn you to an eldritch monster and keep you imprisoned in a dark forest to prey on passers-by for eons.”

“That’s a very sweet offer,” he said earnestly, “no thank you though.” 

She sighed mournfully. “I knew you’d say that… you really would pass up the opportunity to leave in a creepy hut in a barely real forest and eat knights who stray from the path?”

“Hm. I could do that without being transformed,” he said thoughtfully, before a slight shake of the head. “But no, I don’t think that would be best, probably. I would get lonely.”

“I could imprison Morgan’s smarmy nephew there with you…”

Now this he gave more serious consideration, even giving up menacing the dahlia in favour of some real pondering. “That might be nice. I don’t think a creepy forest would suit him very well, though.” 

“No, no, he’s got… what do you call it… asparagus.”

“What?”

“Asparagus,” repeated Sebile, with an impressive amount of confidence. “Anyway, here’s what I’m thinking— you look miserable, so I propose I stick you and your asparagus man on a nice island somewhere for a week or so. Get some sun. Go swimming. Eat coconuts— that sort of thing. I’ve been experimenting with alternate dimensions, you see.”

“Do you mean anxiety?” asked Lancelot, who when faced with multiple things to address responded in seemingly random order. “That would be very nice. Is this one of those dimensions with, you know a— a horrible catch?” 

She parted her mouth slightly as though her innocence had been offended. “No! No, not at all. Not at all, Lancelot. Well— there would only be one key to get out of it and it would be very small and if you dropped it in the ocean or something you would be stuck there forever. But I think it’s worth it. And I’d come find you eventually, I promise.”

As catches go, this one was not especially horrible. It seemed like it would be something that could come up again in a very inconvenient way, but it was also possible it wouldn’t, and he was often told to be more positive. “That sounds safe and fine.” 

“Right! It’ll be fun. I’m sure your smarmy man will love the idea, too.”

Gawain did not love the idea. “I feel like there’s a major technological issue here,” he said, “which is that I don’t understand when, where, why, or how you could possibly do this. I’m missing the— the scientific backdrop. It unsettles me.”

Sebile grinned at him. She never remembered Gawain’s name, which drove him crazy and amused Lancelot to no end. “So— I don’t want to get into the details, but there are infinitely many narratively satisfying situations that you two could find yourselves in in alternate realities, yes?”

“Is that a euphemism?” 

“You have a dirty mind,” she said approvingly, leaning back against the window from her seat perched on the sill. “But no. I mean very literally that given how much Fate loves to play with the two of you, there has to be a reality out there in which you found yourselves stranded on a desert island and are doing quite well for yourselves. And since I have recently figured out how to access such realities— what if I just popped you in for a bit? You could hang out. Get a tan. Eat raw fish. Climb trees, or whatever it is you knights do. How does that sound?”

Gawain raised his hand, remembered this was a conversation, lowered it, and said, “If we’re taking the place of an alternate Gawain and Lancelot, are those dimensions’ Gawain and Lancelot taking our place here?” 

“Yes, but I’ll keep them locked in my dungeon.”

Gawain shrugged. “Alright, that’s not my problem then. I guess I’m willing if Lancelot is.” 

Lancelot shrugged as if to say it was he who’d brought the suggestion in the first place. 

Clasping her hands together, Sebile beamed at them. “Terrific! Uh, Sir— you— person— try not to die, you’ll make Lancelot very sad and he’s already got so much sadness. Lancelot, just take everything easy. You deserve a break.” She stood, sweeping her cloak around her. “Meet me at the Red Chapel in the Forest of Broceliande next full moon. Got it? That’s three days from now.”

“The full moon is always three days hence around here, isn’t it?” Gawain observed to no one in particular. “Right, I’ll write it down in my day planner.” 

But despite Gawain’s astrological certainties, the full moon did arrive— even if it only did so because they were paying attention to it— and the two of them found themselves standing in front of the Red Chapel in the Forest of Broceliande as the moon shone down and Sebile, who had been there when they showed up, did a lot of things with coloured smoke on the steps. There was chanting involved, and when they had tried to exchange pleasantries with her she had informed them that she wasn’t in a talking mood because she had taken a very interesting potion several hours previously and it hadn’t worn off yet. Instead, she had gestured vaguely to chalk marks on the path. They stood in them obediently and waited.

Things began to fade, as if dissolving into the smoke, as the chanting went on, louder and louder. There were other various magical eccentricities, about half of which were needed for the spell and half of which could be safely assumed to be showy additions Sebile added for flair and dramatics and to test her abilities. The fireworks were almost certainly in the latter category, though they would both have admitted if asked that it was a rather nice display.

Eventually however things managed to properly kick into high gear, as their surroundings were further and further obscured with smoke and twirling into unreality. The last sensory input from their home dimension they heard before leaving was Sebile’s voice, saying “Oh, shit! Fuck, hold on!” Before it all dissolved away. 

It was sunny. Gawain, who was less prone to falling asleep and not waking up for a long time, blinked his eyes open first. He squinted. Everything felt bright and the things that didn’t feel bright felt sandy. He tried to breath, and found himself coughing up more sand. Finally, when his lungs had exhausted their supply of things that shouldn’t have been in them, he managed to push himself to sitting and take stock of his surroundings. 

The first word that sprang to mind was _picturesque_. Around him, sand stretched out, interspersed with little sea shells on one side and an array of brilliant flora on the other, including tall trees with tufts on the top and luscious shade beneath them. At his side lay Lancelot, looking perfectly content to be unconscious. And all around him as far as the eye could see stretched clear blue water.

“Oh boy, I love being surrounded by deep water,” said Gawain, already a little regretful of being talked into this. Lancelot did look very peaceful though. And maybe it was very shallow water. Who was to say. Yes, he was going to not investigate and assume it was a foot deep all the way to the horizon. 

Eventually, after sitting in the sand became a little less pleasant and a little more sweaty and boring, he reached out a hand and prodded Lancelot. “Lancelot,” he said, and then repeated himself louder. “Lancelot, there’s a lot of water here. Look at the water.”

Lancelot opened his eyes, sat up groggy but far less sand-filled than Gawain had been, and obediently looked at the water. “Oh. It is very nice. Good morning.” 

“Good morning!” said Gawain, who was feeling increasingly dissatisfied with the island situation. “It’s noon, actually! Look! You can tell by the sun! Isn’t that cool!”

“I wonder if there are any fruit trees on this island,” said Lancelot thoughtfully, and a tad meaningfully. “That is cool. It’s very bright here— the sun.” 

“Very bright here!” Gawain agreed. “Lots of sun! Lots of— sand! It feels very much like sand on my hands.”

“That’s because it is sand,” Lancelot said helpfully. 

Gawain gave him a look. “Yes. It is indeed sand. It is sand and up there is sun. There’s also quite a bit of water. Uhm— sorry, I feel like I’m ruining your fun.”

“Ah, no I— shouldn’t have asked you to come if you would be unhappy. This isn’t exactly your scene, huh?” 

“It’s very— pretty,” said Gawain carefully. “But I am suddenly coming to terms with the fact that sometimes sun is bad, actually.”

Tilting his head, Lancelot considered this. “It’s certainly— very bright. How did Sebile say we were supposed to get out of here, again?”

“Uh, something about a key? Hold on. I’ll remember,” Gawain said, feeling that unique mix of relief and guilt that comes from cancelled plans. “We have a key that we can use to get out. Do you have a key?” 

Lancelot patted his pockets, which he had suddenly realised he had. He had not had them prior to arriving on the island, he was certain. He had not had any of the clothes he was currently wearing. “Uhm… oh!”

“Oh?”

“I suddenly remembered what she said as we were leaving!”

“Uhuh?”

“She said— _oh shit, fuck, hold on._ ”

They stared at each other. “Great,” said Gawain at length. “How long do you suppose it takes to find a magic key on a desert island?”

Lancelot looked around hopelessly. “Oh. Uh. oh no. Hopefully less time than it takes to— to starve to death on a deserted island?” 

“You can eat my corpse if that helps.”

“That’s very sweet,” Lancelot said. “It doesn’t help at all. Ah— I suppose we should, you know take stock of things then?” 

Miserably rubbing sand off his hands, Gawain stood. He peered around at their surroundings again. There did indeed appear to be a plentiful amount of fruit— not types of fruit he had ever seen before, but vaguely fruit-shaped. Some distance into the thick vegetation at the center of the small island he could just make out a lumpy sort of structure. He hoped desperately it was a well. “Let’s get started, I guess.”

The length of time it took to find a magic key on a desert island in an alternate dimension was, in fact, three hours, at least if you had Lancelot. They finally found it at the bottom of a deep natural well that Gawain refused to get closer than twenty feet to. As soon as Lancelot emerged triumphant from the water, a door appeared at the edge of the pit. It stood in thin air, plain and wooden. A single doorknob protruded from it which Gawain eyed warily. 

“Well,” said Lancelot, “this was a short sort of sojourn but I’m feeling ready to go back. The sand really is very sandy and I’m very worried we’re going to lose the key somewhere and get stuck here.”

“Cheers,” Gawain agreed, and gestured to the door enthusiastically. “I think what I missed most about my life was the lack of sand. I’m gonna appreciate it more when I’m back.”

Lancelot unlocked the door, and they stepped through. 

The first to wake this time was Lancelot, because something sharp was jabbing his foot repeatedly. He became aware of this fact through a sleepy haze, and then he became aware that his foot was bare, and that he was lying in bed, and that somewhere he could hear seagulls. Then, when he opened his eyes, he saw that the thing jabbing his foot was in fact some sort of brightly-coloured bird, and furthermore that the world was swaying every-so-slightly. 

“Hello bird,” he said, to be polite, and out of hope it would accept this offer of friendship and stop attacking him before he was forced to do something sad. 

“Fuck you,” said the bird. “Whore.” Then it alighted, retreating to a perch above the doorway. 

Lancelot tried not to take this to heart and glanced around at his surroundings instead. It was a small room— not much more than a bed, a wide table covered in what looked like maps, and a broad windowsill behind him. Gawain lay beside him in the bed, still asleep, his hair mussed over his face. Lancelot prodded him.

He blinked awake with only a little reluctance, regarding him with half-asleep calm. “Morning. I don’t know if you know this, but your tits are fully out.” 

Suddenly self-conscious, Lancelot flushed. Glanced down, glanced back up, hurriedly pulled the sheet towards him. “I don’t think we’re home, Gawain.”

More awake, Gawain sat up and confirmed this statement. “This is definitely not where I live,” he said. “I’d remember the bird.”

“Sluts!” said the bird. 

“It does… talk like a bird you would own,” said Lancelot. He turned his head and squinted out the large window. Most of it was sky, but a good portion was water as well. “Uh oh. Gawain, how are you feeling about your whole water situation right now? Are you feeling good about water?”

“You don’t have to break it to me gently, Love, I know we’re on a boat,” Gawain said with only a little bit of reluctance. “As long as I keep reminding myself that boats are infallible and never sink, we’re golden.” 

“Aristotle is a hussy,” said the bird.

“Yeah, that’s definitely my bird,” Gawain agreed. 

A quick glance at the door showed it was firmly closed with a key in it— not the same key that had taken them here. Lancelot suddenly felt quite a bit more awake. He patted his pockets, found he had none and that he was in fact completely naked, and then lifted the sheet to look on the bed. The key was nowhere in sight. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Uh— right, so— I think Sebile maybe made a big mistake.”

“Oh, Jesus. Okay. At least she didn’t specifically warn us against dropping the key in the ocean!” said Gawain, in sudden panicked irritation. “This is definitely looking mistake-y.” 

On the door hung several long surcoats tailored in a strange fashion. Clutching the sheet around him and leaving Gawain squawking indignantly behind him, he stood, nearly tripping over more clothes strewn on the ground, and grabbed one of the surcoats at random. “Uh. This needs clothes under it. Do you see a closet or something? A chest?”

“I see what I presume were yesterday's clothes on the floor,” Gawain said, somewhat helpfully. He was still sitting up in bed surveying the room, apparently planning to learn from Lancelot’s clothing mistakes and have the benefit of secondhand experience. “Uh— wooden chest at the foot of the bed?”

“Oh. Yes.” Lancelot strode over to it, swung it open, and was dismayed to find that it was in fact full of jewelry. “This is not right. This is— we own too many things here. This is too many things.”

Gawain peered over. “Ooh,” he said. “Shiny.”

It was in fact very shiny, an ostentatious display of gold and silver usually only seen in reliquaries. Lancelot checked under the bed and found another, flatter chest, which had no layer of dust. That was promising enough that he dragged it out, opening it to find a few pairs of plain undershirts and hose. “Good enough,” he said, and chucked a pair at Gawain. 

Catching them, Gawain said, “You know, there are an awful lot of swords in this room. Weird swords. Curvy.”

“I bet they would be good for slicing off limbs and things,” observed Lancelot approvingly, selecting clothes at random and applying them how he guessed was best. 

Gawain had clothed himself and was glancing down at his torso with an expression of glee. “I’m really enjoying this situation. I’m enjoying this. The fabric is so soft. There’s so much— oh, God.”

This last was because someone had knocked at the door. Both froze for a second in the hopes that their interruptor would go away. No such luck: a voice called, “Captain?”

They looked at each other as if to inquire who was the captain. After a panicked moment, assuming that he would be annoying in all universes, Gawain said “Yeah? Gimme a minute.” Then looked at Lancelot apologetically and shrugged. 

Lancelot shrugged back at him. “What do we— do we play along?” he whispered.

“Pass me that,” said Gawain, which meant yes. It took them another frantic minute of shuffling before they were— hopefully— dressed suitably. Lancelot pretended not to notice Gawain grab a handful of sparkly things from the chest and shove it in one embroidered pocket. 

After a few minutes the knock came again. “Captain? I’m really sorry to bother you, I just— the prisoner requested to speak with you. Says it’s urgent.”

“Fuck!” squawked the bird, punctuating this remark. Lancelot finished pulling on a discarded boot and yanked the door open in a panic to please whoever this demanding voice was. A young woman wearing similar clothes stood on the other side, smiling a little awkwardly. “Oh! Uh, hello, both of you— sorry to disturb you— the man in the brig from the _May Queen_ won’t stop saying he wants to talk to the Captain.”

“Oh,” said Lancelot, and tried to imbue it with whatever meaning was most suitable. He could not tell if the woman was talking to him or Gawain. He also didn’t recognize her. “Uh— we’ll— we’ll come with you, then.”

She nodded and turned to set off across the deck, and they followed after her. The bird attempted to go with them, and Gawain slammed the door in its face before it could continue it’s mocking crusade. The ship wasn’t laid out like any either had been on before, and Lancelot tried to memorize it’s layout as they went. But the route the woman took them was circuitous and devoid of any other inhabitants. Finally she stopped in front of a plain wooden door at the bottom of a fleet of stairs and said, “Yell if he tries anything. I’ll be right here with my gun.”

“Awesome, love those,” said Gawain confidently. “Shall we?”

The door was opened. Lancelot stepped through first and blinked in the sudden darkness. A man sat huddled against the far wall behind thick steel bars— his hair flopped forward over his face and his clothes, although clearly well-made, were ragged and stained with blood. The door clicked shut behind them. Lancelot was just about to say something articulate like _what now_ when Gawain gasped. 

For a second Lancelot couldn’t tell what he had noticed— faces had never been his strong suit. Then the eyes peering out from under brown hair caught at his memory and his heart dropped. 

“Hello, Gawain,” said Gareth.

“Just so you know I’m not in charge here, _he’s_ the captain,” Gawain said quickly, pointing at Lancelot.

“What?” said Lancelot.

“What?” said Gareth. Then he blinked and the confusion was chased off his face by his previous dour expression. “Imagine my reaction when the quartermaster— Ascolot, or whatever her name is— told me you were onboard. And Lancelot du Lac too. I hope you’re doing well together.”

“Doing really great, lots of jewelry,” Gawain reported, thin veneer of confidence slipping like a short skirt after a long night out. “You look well?”

“I’m covered in blood.”

Gawain gestured nervously. “Under the blood.” 

For a moment Gareth eyed him. Then he gave a short bark of laughter. “You’re not even asking after family? It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Gawain, and took a stab in the dark. “What, three years?”

“Twelve years,” Gareth said, his voice as dry as the ocean wasn’t.

“Haha,” said Gawain aloud. “I’m bad at numbers, you know. How’s uhh— hm.”

Finally, Lancelot spoke, voice restrained. “You wanted to speak to— to the captain, Gareth?”

Gareth’s mouth twitched. “Oh, are we on first name terms? I’m so delighted that Gawain has talked so much about me. Very friendly of you. Call me Gareth again and I’ll— I’ll tell Gawain about what happened to Agravaine.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Gawain was looking more than a tad deflated. “This started off so well, too. I got all these rings.” He was in fact wearing a half dozen new rings. 

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying your rings and your— _him_ ,” said Gareth, waving a malicious hand in Lancelot’s direction. “I’m terribly sorry to show up and ruin all of it, but I’m afraid I must tell you your crew is planning a mutiny.”

“Oh, shit!” Gawain said. “Well, that’s not ideal. God, I’m usually more well spoken, I swear. What the fuck?”

“How do you know?” After a moment's pause Lancelot added, “Sir?” 

Not acknowledging the inelegance in either of their responses, Gareth chucked something onto the hard wood floor in front of him. It clanged. “I took a nice nap about an hour ago,” he said languidly, “and when I woke up someone had slipped a key into my cell. Funny, that.”

“Traitors!” spat Gawain, who wasn’t as quick on the uptake as Lancelot and was more prone to dramatics. “Why on earth would you tell us this?”

“Because I’m so very worried about my dear older brother.” Gareth’s expression was flat as a board, and so was his voice. 

Thoughts connected in Gawain’s brain, but not the right ones. He ignored Lancelot frantically shaking his sleeve in favour of narrowing his eyes and saying, “You’re trying to sew discord on board my ship, aren’t you?”

“Does it matter, if I’m telling the truth?” Gareth asked, tossing a lazy hand in the direction of the key. 

“Oh, fuck it,” said Lancelot, and snapped his fingers in front of Gawain’s face. “Gawain, that’s the— that’s _the_ key.”

To his credit, he snapped out of his overblown dramatics instantly. “Oh, fuck. Hey Ga— hey Gareth my darling brother Gareth can I— could you please hand me that key?” 

“Wh— what?”

Gawain held out his hand. “I just want it for no reason. Please?” Then, in the sing-song voice of an adult dangling sweets above an uncooperative child said, “I’ll get you medical care.” 

“You—” Gareth stopped, took a deep breath. “You _bastard._ Here. Take it and choke on it for all I care. I hope Guinevere Pendragon catches up with you lot and tears you to shreds.”

“She definitely will,” Gawain said reassuringly, still reaching out his hand. “Gimme?” 

Unceremoniously, Gareth grabbed the key from where it lay and hurled it through the bars of his cell. Lancelot caught it. 

As soon as he did, another door appeared in the middle of the room. Gareth gasped. “What—?”

“Ooh, I did forget about that,” Gawain admitted. “Okay, so— so I’m an angel visiting earth in the form of your brother.”

“Huh?” said Lancelot. 

Gareth shook his head. “Absolutely not, I do not believe you.”

“I wouldn’t either.” 

“Are we—” Lancelot glanced frantically between the two of them. “Are we… I mean… I feel like— there’s a lot going on in this world. Do we have a duty to— oh no, actually, I think we should just say to hell with it.”

“Maybe leave a helpful note?” Gawain offered. 

“Hello?” said Gareth. “I’m right here. What is _happening_?”

Gawain spread his reigned hands placatingly. “Okay, okay, I’m not actually an angel.”

“I know.”

“I’m actually,” he paused for dramatic effect, “from another dimension.”

Gareth fixed him with a look of intense dislike. “Why doesn’t your man have a try at this?” 

“It’s the truth! Really!” 

Lancelot, who had been trying to stay out of Orkney family drama, particularly as it appeared to center on him, grimaced. “Um. So— Gareth— I’m not even going to bother trying to explain, but we’re going to walk through this door and I’m pretty sure we will then reappear suddenly in this room. Hopefully. And we won’t— well— I’m going to assume we won’t remember anything that just happened.”

“This is a very bad scheme,” said Gareth. “Gawain, you’re slipping.”

“And then!” Lancelot continued, slightly louder. “And then, I want you to— to tell the new us— I want you to tell them that they should, uh, apologize to you, and that you should all be friends. Also, uh, tell me, that whatever he did to Agravaine he is very sorry. Thank you.”

“And tell me to get rid of the bird,” Gawain added. “Okay, love you, bye!” 

And before Gareth could say anything else, Gawain slid the key into the doorknob, swung the whole affair open, and they both jumped through.

This time it only took a moment for Gawain to open his eyes. The first thing he noticed was that he was upright; the second thing he noticed was that someone had their arm tucked around his; and the third thing he noticed was that it wasn’t Lancelot. He blinked and found himself face to face with—

“Are you alright?” said a very familiar voice hidden behind an ornate mask. It took a moment for Gawain to realise it was Ragnelle. Ragnelle, whom he hadn’t seen in years— not after she’d left him. “You froze up for a second.”

“Thank you my— thank you, I’m quite well,” Gawain responded, voice smoother than it had a right to be in this situation. “I’d be more alright with something to drink. You?” 

She squeezed his arm and tossed her chin at the room, which was packed with people— people in brightly coloured clothing; gowns that swished on the floor and frilly surcoats and masks, masks everywhere he looked. “I’m sure Guinevere will be back soon with the champagne. And I’m— I’m nervous, I suppose. As much as I know you can look after yourself, I do worry that— well, you know.”

“Yes, of course.” He had no idea. “But I’m sure it’ll be alright.” He was not. “I wonder where—”

“There you are,” Guinevere said, appearing next to Ragnelle with a familiar knowing curve to her red-painted lips, champagne glasses in hand. Half her face was covered in a brilliant red and gold mask, and Gawain resisted the temptation to reach up and touch his own to see what it felt like. “Gawain, you’re slumping. You can’t disappear into a guest room this time, you know. Not when we’ve got business.”

“I would never,” he assured her. “I’m very present for and aware of business.” 

He couldn’t see her expression behind the mask, but it was evident from her voice that she was narrowing her eyes at him. “What’s gotten into you? You’re not jumpy, are you? It’s hardly the first time.”

“I’m just suffering from a distinct lack of champagne,” he said, scanning the room beneath his mask. Now this, he thought, was very properly exciting and mysterious. He was already mentally anticipating the covert conversations he might have and secrets he may uncover. Then the screaming started. “Oh!” he said out loud. “Ah— ladies, I must excuse myself for the, uh, task at hand. Yes?”

“Right,” said Guinevere tacitly, as Ragnelle muttered, “Be safe, please!” But Gawain was already gone through the crowd, heading straight for the screaming. Where you found screaming, he had learned, you frequently found Lancelot. 

But when he managed to fight through the crowds thronging in the middle of the expansive hall, he found nothing like the scene he had expected— there was no rush of people trying to get away, no yelling, and furthermore no weapons drawn save the knife in Lancelot’s hand. He was standing with his shoulders drawn up and despite the dark blue mask on his face, Gawain could tell he was uncomfortable. There was indeed a body at his feet, which was normal, but there was also a man in an unostentatious outfit politely dragging it away, which was less normal. In fact, no one seemed to be protesting at all. Gawain burst out from the crowd a few feet from Lancelot, relief outweighing confusion. “Lancelot, I’m so glad I found you.”

Behind him, someone cleared their throat. Gawain turned, looked, then raised his head by about two feet and looked again. “Fuck,” he said.

He could see Guinevere in the background making frantic and confused eye contact through the mask and tried to shrug ever so slightly. _Sorry, alternate dimension Guinevere._ “Just came over to say hello to an old friend?” he tried, hoping the question mark wasn’t too audible.

“I don’t think you’re here to say hello,” Galehaut said with an unpromising threat in his tone. “What’s your game?”

“Uh,” Lancelot said, stepping forward. He looked remarkably untroubled considering the company which had suddenly shown up. “He— he just asked me for a dance. Because— uhm— it’s a ball. Right?”

“Exactly!” said Gawain, and beamed nervously.

Guinevere made several gestures at him that ranged from rude to threatening and landed on hopeless. Galehaut stared in disbelief and offense, presumably that Gawain would exist in his presence. He glanced up at Lancelot. “You agreed to this?” 

“Yes?” said Lancelot, then cleared his throat and tried again. “Yes! Uh, it’s— it’s just a dance. And we need to— talk. Probably.”

Either Galehaut or Guinevere might have intercepted further, but just then the music started up again, and before anyone could say anything, Gawain grabbed Lancelot’s extended hand and dragged him out of the small circle he had created with his murder incident. He saw people turn their heads slightly as they strode past, trying to get as far away from their acquaintances as they could, and when he was certain no one could hear them, Gawain whispered, “This one’s certainly interesting, isn’t it?”

“I think we might be enemies,” Lancelot responded with a degree of concern. “They are very cool with murder here, though. That’s nice.” 

“Yes, I noticed that. Oh— oh God. The music is really picking up.” Gawain glanced around. No one else seemed to be doing anything particularly complicated, just holding one hand and placing the other on their partner’s waist, then wobbling back and forth a bit. He grabbed Lancelot’s hand and pulled him in, putting his left hand on his back. “Oh! Wow! You are _heavily_ armed. Did you notice that?”

“I made use of it. You are, as well, I think.” Lancelot glanced nervously to the side. “Oh God. Oh, they are all— everyone is looking at us. Stop it.”

Gawain stopped trying to say hi to the couple dancing next to him, who were regarding him with a mix of suspicion and fear, in favour of reaching his hand to the inside of his very fancy coat. “Oh. Yes. That is a lot of knives. I didn’t notice those before. Guinevere is— Guinevere is staring at me like an owl. What am I supposed to be doing?”

Lancelot shook his head lightly, then stopped. “Oh no. Uhm, you know how we’re probably enemies and are— heavily armed?”

“Oh no!” Gawain said, just a bit too loudly, as it dawned. “Should we— I mean—”

“Should we stab each other?” Lancelot said, his voice rising slightly. “I would really prefer not in public!”

“It really is more of a private thing between consenting partners, isn’t it,” Gawain observed, a little distantly. “Where the fuck is that goddamned key?” 

“Could be anywhere.”

“I’m becoming increasingly cognizant of that fact. How long do you think we can get away with just da— wait.” Gawain grinned, then remembered Ragnelle, and prayed they had the same sort of agreement in this world as in their own. “I have an idea. Oh, Lancelot, I’m so smart. Kiss me.”

“Right now?” 

“If you would be so obliging.”

He would be so obliging, and really made an enthusiastic go of it despite stagefright, practically sweeping Gawain off his feet in a very obvious display of affection. Lancelot wasn’t quite sure what the scheme was but any Gawain scheme called for dramatics. 

After a long second Gawain heard a few people around them exchange surprised murmurs, but the music was still playing, louder and louder, and Lancelot was kissing him, and if he kept his eyes open and made _don’t worry about it_ gestures at Guinevere from across the room, he knew Lancelot wouldn’t mind. The music swelled, trilled, and then faded. As people clapped politely, Gawain finally pulled away and nodded his head at the tall, open windows against the far wall. Curtains fluttered through them in the wind and outside he could just make out what looked like a balcony.

“We’re gonna go have pretend sex on that balcony,” Gawain whispered, leaning in for one more brief kiss. “I’m so smart.”

They made their way over to the balcony. Lancelot tried to walk over to it in an about-to-have-sex way, realized he didn’t know what that might look like, and settled on walking normally and giving people polite nods at they passed by. After what seemed like miles of ballroom they made it to the balcony, Lancelot having given up on acting and focusing on not making eye contact with anyone, least of all—

“Oh God,” he said, throwing himself through the nearest curtained window and then collapsing against the cool marble wall as soon as he was out of sight from everyone except Gawain. “Galehaut’s going to think I cheated on him. I— I feel so bad.”

“Ah,” said Gawain, who did not feel bad. “Well— I mean, think positive. As soon as we switch out, other me is going to kill you. So other you won’t have to worry about Galehaut.”

“That— uh, I don’t feel very positive about that actually, I will be honest.” Lancelot’s whole face was a flushed and miserable crimson. Then he frowned. “I mean, you seem very confident you could kill me. I think I could kill you. I could probably stab you faster.”

“Aw, man, we’re never gonna get to see who won. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to finally find out if I could kill the love of my life in a death match. God damn it. Maybe Sebile could pop back in and ask Guinevere what happened.” 

“Chin up,” said Lancelot, “maybe there will be another dimension where one of us brutally murders the other. Thrill of the— oh! Look!”

Gawain turned. Behind them on the exquisitely tiled floor of the balcony lay the key, glinting innocently. He grabbed it one gloved hand and then, when no door appeared, passed it awkwardly to Lancelot. “I think bare skin might be the only way,” he said, yanking off his gloves and tossing them haphazardly off the balcony. “Here, pass it— aha!”

The door appeared, hovering a few inches in over air above the ornate railing. Lancelot stood and hopped up onto the railing, put the key in the lock, and hesitated a moment. “You know, guilt aside that really was quite funny. The— the kiss stunt.”

“I think we should start doing that every place we go,” Gawain said cheerfully, accepting a proffered hand up to join Lancelot in front of the door. “Really cause some trouble for the other us’. I mean who do they think they are, saying they’re Gawain and Lancelot? Assholes.”

“You don’t think that’s— I mean— unethical? To screw up our own lives and not pay the consequences?” said Lancelot, who had blushed a deep red.

Gawain grinned up at him, his face cast in strange shadows from the mask. “Oh, absolutely. Deeply unethical. Isn’t that the fun of it?”

“I suppose if other us weren’t locked up in Sebile’s dungeon they’d have slaughtered dozens by this point, so...” Lancelot nodded decisively. “Fuck em.” 

And they stepped through the door.

“...the principles of the imagined community,” Gawain said. “In fact, this is precisely what Anderson was— was talking about— what he was talking about when— oh, hello, everyone.”

There was an everyone. This everyone consisted of three dozen or so young people, dressed oddly and looking sleepy, seated in a small auditorium facing him. They were looking at him expectantly. “Sorry everyone,” said Gawain smoothly, “I’ve suddenly been— possessed by a demon. You can leave, I have to go get an exorcism. Bye bye!” 

No one left. They all stared at him in shocked silence as though they had never heard of anyone getting possessed by a demon before. Finally one girl in the front row raised her hand tentatively.

“Yes, Julia?” Gawain said.

“That’s not my name,” she said with some hesitation. “Uhm. Is this a joke?”

“Julia, demonic possession is very serious. I would never joke about it,” Gawain said grimly. “Please leave immediately.” 

“Weren’t you already possessed by something?” someone called from the back of the strangely shiny hall. “Like, some spirit of spring or whatever? How can you be possessed by two things at the same time?”

“It’s called teamwork, Gregory. Look, double possession is incredibly serious. And contagious.” 

The students muttered at each other. “I think this is a test,” Gawain heard someone whisper. “Like the thing with the bow and arrow.”

Gawain opened his mouth to argue, shrugged and decided to go with it. “Okay, you figured it out, this was a test and you all passed. Part two of the test is— is whoever can find me a specific little black key wins. Go.” 

They didn’t go. “Where— is it?” someone asked. Before Gawain could respond, another student yelled, “Is it dangerous like the pop quiz from last week?”

“It’s only dangerous if it goes too long without being discovered. You have at least an hour before it begins releasing toxins, so you’d better work fast. It could be anywhere in a half mile radius.” He paused and considered Lancelot’s general everything. “Uh, also, if you see a tall man holding some sort of weapon, run away from him.”

“What kind of weapon?”

Gawain glanced around at his surroundings. Nothing looked particularly deadly, but then again, Lancelot didn’t look particularly deadly either until he meant business. “A… sword? Sharp stick? Knife? Could be anything! That’s the fun of it. You’ll know it’s him because he’ll be very handsome. Okay, have fun kids!”

They burst into action with surprised murmurs. Gawain, his task discharged, sat back against the table behind him and surveyed the room. It was made of an odd material, vaguely metallic and not particularly attractive. On three sides surrounding him were strange white sheets covering the walls. Writing— his own handwriting, he could tell, even if the font was odd— covered them. One of them had a large drawing of a horse that had been carefully labelled _Foucault._

“Damn, Gringolet,” Gawain said under his breath, shaking his head. “Looks like I betrayed you. I cheated on you with Foucault.”

Growing quickly bored of the room, which was too mysterious to do anything with but not mysterious enough to be interesting, Gawain set to seriously wondering where Lancelot was. Maybe he should just pop his head out and see if anyone was screaming outside. 

He did this. Someone was, as it happened, screaming in the hallway, but there was no blood visible. All his own students had rushed off to look for the key, which was convenient, because crying young people took precedence to matters of interdimensional importance. He sighed and stepped out, clearing his throat awkwardly and hoping she knew him.

She looked up from her tear-streaked hands in an embarrassed panic, and muttered something like “oh no!” or “oh god!” before freezing like a sobbing deer.

Cautiously, Gawain asked her what was wrong, and she only shook her hand. “Nothing— nothing, nothing, I’m sorry—”

He glanced around to make sure Lancelot wasn’t killing anyone, and when the halls proved clear, he slid down to the sort-of-stone-like floor next to her and rested his back on the wall. “Uh, this is going to be a weird question,” he said, “but do you know who I am?”

She blinked and answered nervously, like it was a trick question. “Uhm. Sir— sir professor? Gawain Orkney. The— the spring deity?”

“Oh! Well that sounds very interesting,” he said, jotting that down mentally. “I’ll be honest, I’m experiencing some magic nonsense at the moment and don’t have a clue what’s going on here, so bear with me, but it really does seem like there’s something wrong. What’s your name?” 

“Uh— Clarisse. I’m not— I’m not in your class, I’m sorry, I was just sitting here because—” She flushed red and stared down at her knees. “I just really failed this test—” Her voice broke at that. 

“Oh, I’ve been there,” Gawain said, leaning his head back against the wall. “Trust me, when I was your age I failed so many tests.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. It feels like a big deal now, but I promise it isn’t.” Whatever one said of Gawain no one could argue he didn’t have a gift for improv and an unfair amount of good fortune. “Did you kill anyone? Even that’s fixable, honestly.”

“I—” Clarisse, startled into not crying, gaped at him. “What? Are you joking?”

“Uh. Definitely,” he said, reassessing what he’d assumed the situation to be. “Ah— what was this a test of, pray tell?”

She gulped vaguely at him. “Modern British Politics.”

“Ah, well, you know politics is a very tricky and dangerous arena. I’d consider it a success to escape with your life.” 

“Haha,” she said miserably. “Cavi— Professor Cavill fails two thirds of his students, you know. I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t pass this class. I really— actually, I really wanted to take your Origins of Nationalism class next semester. Sorry, I’m not trying to— I’m not complaining. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Gawain said gently. “You know what— do you have a piece of paper and a writing utensil? Don’t worry about why, but I’m going to forget this entire conversation so I want to write a note.” 

“Are you— are you _high?_ ”

“Sadly, no. Spring deity business, remember? Don’t worry, I’ll have Future Me figure this whole affair out and it’ll be just fine. Paper?” 

Mutely, she reached into the strange bag in front of her and handed him a sheaf of very thin papers and something that looked like a small metal rod. He took it, found it had ink on one end, and jotted down a memo. Then he paused. “Also, while I’m here, do you want this Professor Cavill fellow brutally murdered? We could take care of that.”

“What?” she squawked. “No! I mean sometimes, but— no. No I do not. Uhm— are you— like an evil doppelganger? No offense. Sorry.” 

“It depends on your definition of evil, I suppose,” he said, which was certainly not very comforting. “I think I’m mostly a good guy. What was the test called again? Modern something?” 

“Modern— Modern British Politics,” Clarisse said, but now she was looking at him with a large measure of concern. “You’re not the real Professor Orkney, are you?”

“Yes and no,” he said, finishing up the note and tucking into his own pocket. “I am Sir Gawain of Orkney, but not exactly— here’s your pen back. It’s a long weird story that I’ll be able to explain in full when your me gets back. Really, don’t worry about it though. I’m mostly harmless.” 

“You’re really not going to— kill Professor Cavill?” she said, although she sounded more like she was joking now. “I think the real Professor Orkney would be a little— a little put out.”

“Well, the plan was never for _me_ to kill Profesor Cavill, I have auxiliary backup.”

“That— sounds bad,” she said. Before Gawain could respond, they heard hurried footsteps on the not-stone floor. 

“I believe that would be backup,” Gawain said with a small smile. When he glanced up he did indeed find Lancelot, who was dressed in a very unusual style— his surcoat ended at the waist and his shoes were both bright green and perforated. Beside him, he heard Clarisse give a muted gasp, as though she recognized him. 

“Gawain!” said Lancelot. “I’m so worried and stressed! There are so many things going so fast outside and someone put me in one of them and took me here because I threatened them with a knife I found and told them to take me to you!”

“Efficient! And hey, no murders! Pretty good,” Gawain said approvingly. “I’ve got like forty youths out looking for the key, so we just have to wait here. Oh, I’m being— rude, sorry. Clarisse, Lancelot. Lancelot, Clarisse.” He made the appropriate gestures and Lancelot gave a small wave. 

“Cool,” said Clarisse, as though she were meeting Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 

It was at that moment that more footsteps sounded and a small group of students rounded the corner, arguing amongst themselves. “I saw it first!” Not Julia was saying to her classmate, who was clutching— yes, _the_ key. Gawain breathed out. “Ooh!” he said, holding out his hand and ignoring the glares his students were shooting each other. Violence, he reflected, was imminent in the ranks of the unlearned. That was a fun problem for Other Gawain. “Gimme.”

“Professor, I found it first and Nick took it from me, a bunch of people saw it happen,” Not Julia said quickly, as Nick held out the key.

Gawain removed the note from his pocket and used it to grab the key without touching it. “Nick, the last person who did that— I stabbed and then dragged behind my horse for hours. Consider this a warning. Julia, great work. I owe you— oh, how about a dozen fine horses? That seems fair.” 

“What?” said Not Julia.

“ _What?_ ” shrieked Nick. 

“He means it,” said Lancelot happily from the wall behind the students.

“I mean everything I say. I never joke, you know this.” Gawain scanned the assemblage and nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent— parting words: Clarisse, you’re gonna be fine. Come talk to me as soon as I’m gone and it’ll be taken care of. Few mistakes are really worth mourning so much. Julia, you’re going places. Nick— there’s always a chance for redemption. The rest of you— aw, whatever.”

He tossed the key into his other hand, slipping the note back into his pocket as the door appeared behind him to assorted gasps and shrieks. Lancelot pushed himself off of the wall with a small smile on his face, the sort of smile he got when he was having fun watching Gawain be dramatic and ridiculous. 

Gawain unlocked the door, then looked back at him expectantly, meaningful quirk of a smile asking after their conversation from the last universe. He understood and, joining Gawain, Lancelot leaned over to press a mostly chaste kiss to Gawain’s lips, before drawing back and gesturing at the door without a glance for their audience. 

The last thing they heard as they jumped through into the nondescript blackness beyond was Clarisse saying, “I _swear_ he was an evil doppelganger—”


	2. II. Motet: Herr, wenn ich nur Dich habe

Gawain was picking the lock on a door. Unfortunately, he realized as he looked down at the tool in his hand, he had no idea how to do that. Other Gawain probably had, judging from the situation he found himself in. But he was truly at a loss. He jiggled the door handle and found it still locked. 

Thus dismayed, he gave up and slid to the floor, his back to the door, and surveyed the hallway before him. _This_ looked like home. It wasn’t home, because he had never been here before, but it could have been. Tapestries hung from the walls and arched windows let out onto green fields below. 

“Well,” he announced prosaically to the world at large, “Lady Fortune, if you love me, you’ll teach me how to pick this lock so I can find out what’s on the other side.”

And with that he turned back to the door and gave it another go.

That was when he heard someone clear their throat behind him.

“This keeps happening,” Gawain said aloud, then swivelled on his heel to face his new company. “I’m so sorry, my lord, that must have sounded terribly suspicious— I was only intending to clean this room, but I lost my set of keys that I had from the Seneschal and I didn’t want to bother him with something so trifling. I promise I’m only trying to do my job.”

It was a halfway decent lie for being made up on the spot with no context. Unfortunately the people one lied to didn’t take extenuating circumstances into account when they decided whether or not to believe you. The man, whom Gawain didn’t recognize, tilted his head. “What business do you have here? If you come clean I won’t have you hanged.”

He didn’t quite believe that, but decided to try a sympathetic tactic anyway. “Please— my lord I mean no harm I swear— I swear if you spare me I’ll serve you my whole life—” He fell to his knees, trying to make it real convincing and having fun with it despite himself. “Really, my lord, I swear I will be loyal to you if you let me live, please—” Gawain blinked a few times trying to summon tears, but that he’d never been able to master, so he put a little tremour in his voice and hoped it would be good enough. 

The well-dressed man regarded him for a moment with no clear expression. Then he said, “If you want into this room so bad, I suppose I will let you in. And I’ll leave your fate to my son.”

“My lord, thank you, thank you for your mercy, I—”

“Be silent,” the man said, and knocked on the door. Lots of doors around, Gawain thought. You never noticed the preponderance of doors in the world until you were in a situation like this one. 

The second Gawain heard the flustered coughing from the other side he knew he was in for an interesting time. For a second he wondered if Lancelot would pretend not to have heard, but then he called from inside: “Er— hello? Who is it?”

“As I am aging,” Gawain’s captor pronounced, “I believe it befits me to leave the business of justice to my heir. And I have caught a thief.”

“Technically I haven’t stolen anything,” Gawain pointed out. “Trespassing, definitely, intent to thieve, probably. But, you know— it’s good to be accurate.”

The door swung open. Lancelot was dressed lavishly in dark colours and wore a thin gold circlet that was cocked inelegantly to one side. His expression was a look of horror mostly found on long dead corpses and people who've been walked in on doing something very embarrassing indeed. “I— me? You’re talking to me?”

“I believe I was,” the man who appeared to be Lancelot’s sort-of father said jovially. “It’s nearly noon, Lancelot, you really should have been up hours ago. Have you eaten?”

“Ah. Uhm. I.” This was bad improvisation even for Lancelot. His face looked like a death mask. “I’m unwell?” 

The man clicked his tongue. “Clearly. Shall I tell Pharien you won’t be showing for the banquet tonight?”

“Pharien— God. No, I’m? I’m great! I can take care of this!” He gestured at Gawain, frantic to end the conversation.

“He definitely can,” Gawain agreed, only a little too enthusiastically. “I’m very well taken care of.” 

Lancelot, who appeared to be passing away, stared unblinkingly at the man’s face. “Don’t worry, Claudas. I’ll make sure he isn’t a problem anymore.”

And with that Gawain found himself handed over. Claudas, a name he was pretty sure he’d heard somewhere but couldn’t quite place, made some icy remark before departing down the hall, and Lancelot finally closed the door on him with a shaky exhale. He had the quivery air of a sail in a strong wind. “Well,” he said, “I hate this.”

“You’re a prince!” Gawain said. He wasn’t sure exactly what the issue was. “Uhm— he seemed— fatherly.”

“I think you have very low standards for that,” Lancelot said, not unkindly. “That man killed my father— I spent my childhood in hiding from him.” 

“Oh!” This was, objectively, not very good. Gawain wondered if Lancelot would feel comforted were he to wreak bloody violence, or whether he’d prefer to do it himself. Rather than ask, he opted for slipping an arm around his shoulder. “I’m sorry. That’s— I wonder what happened here, then.”

“Hm. I’m not sure,” Lancelot said quietly, leaning into his touch. He didn’t seem to mind the inelegant sympathy. “But I wouldn’t trust anything he— says or acts. Oh, look. You’ve got a funny necklace.”

Gawain glanced down and found he was not able to see his own neck. “Oh? What does it look like?”

“Charms,” said Lancelot, brushing a finger over his collarbone. “Looks like— two snakes, and there’s some writing. I can’t read it.”

“Can you remove it so I can see it?” Gawain asked curiously, and accordingly he felt careful fingers on the back of his neck, and Lancelot was holding the charm. He took it, studied it a moment, and laughed. “Good luck on certain business endeavours— it’s a blessing to thieves.” 

Lancelot snorted. “You’re not a very good thief if you have a necklace that says you’re a thief. Come on, Gawain. This is like getting Lady Fortune on your side all over again.”

“Aw don’t worry about me, if someone’s close enough to see the necklace they’re already under my power.” He wiggled his fingers as if to indicate some sort of ability. Then he sobered. “This is Roman. I wonder— what I’ve been doing in Rome all these years.”

“Getting people under your power, apparently,” said Lancelot cheerfully. “But you’ve been outwitted, finally. God. I want to leave here as soon as possible. I checked the whole room for the key and didn’t find it.”

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be— if I go wandering about looking for the key without you Claudas will probably be a tad suspicious,” Gawain realized with some reluctance. “I think it falls on you to— oh, what now?”

There was a violent and irrythmic knocking on the door as if it was being repeatedly kicked. Gawain and Lancelot looked at each other. “I’m going to hide under the bed,” Gawain announced. “Just in case it’s needed.”

His eyes wide, Lancelot hissed, “Why would it be needed?”

“No reason, I’m sure you can handle this!”

“Come _on!”_ A familiar voice whined from outside the door. “Open the fuck up!” 

“ _Shit_ ,” said Lancelot and Gawain in unison. Shooing Gawain away in the direction of the bed, Lancelot rushed over to the door. “Uh— just one minute. I’m— I twisted my ankle and I’m very slow at walking.”

“Whatever,” said Lionel as the door finally opened, just a few inches, in a voice which conveyed both lack of belief and lack of caring about the truth. “Pharien sent me to find out whether you’re actually sick or just trying to get out of dinner.”

“Well— I’m very sick, it’s true. Uh. Why would I lie to get out of dinner?”

Lionel held up a finger questioningly. “So, you’re sick _and_ you hurt your ankle? In the same morning?”

“It’s been a bad morning,” Lancelot growled, and then grimaced when he saw hesitation flash through Lionel’s eyes. Too much. 

“Yeah, I can tell. You look like you aged about five years.” Lionel sniffed. “Also, what the fuck is in there that you’re hiding? You’re such a shit liar.” 

“I’m very tired,” ground out Lancelot. “Fine. Come in, there’s nothing here except all the places I hurt my ankle today.”

Offense forgiven in exchange for an opportunity for nosiness, Lionel immediately darted past him into the room. 

“What the fuck?” he said immediately, and Lancelot turned around in resigned despair.

“I thought you were going to hide under the bed,” he said vacantly.

Gawain shrugged. “There was a bunch of dust down there. Hi, Lionel— whom I have never met.”

“What the _fuck_?” Lionel said again. He was standing stock still in the center of the room, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing sitting on my cousin’s bed?”

“I’m just hanging around,” he said vaguely. “Hey, is your dad by any chance evil?”

“He was pardoned,” Lionel bit out. “We don’t talk about that. He was pardoned by Claudas.” He paused. “Wait, you mean my real dad? He’s dead. Why? Also, who are you?”

“Friend of your cousin’s,” Gawain said, at the same time Lancelot said “A thief.”

Lionel blinked suspiciously. “Huh. Hold on— are you— oh, gross. Ew.” 

“He’s a _thief_ ,” Lancelot repeated emphatically, trying not to think about the situation. 

“Yeah, that doesn’t help, Lancelot!” Lionel crossed his arms. “Also, really? You? I’d expect this from Hector. But you?”

Gawain laughed at that, then slapped his hand over his mouth when Lancelot looked at him funny, shaking his head but still sort of laughing. “Nothing!”

“You think Hector is funny?” said Lionel, bristling with righteous cousinly rage. “Lancelot, your— your honour is _so_ in shambles right now.”

“Not if you— don’t tell anyone?” Lancelot suggested weakly. “Just tell Pharien I’m too ill to do— whatever it was but not enough to need a doctor. I’ll owe you a favour?”

“Oh, dangerous move,” Gawain commented, drawing on his own likely more antagonistic sibling experience. 

Lionel turned a withering glance on him. “Shut up. You’re— I’ll have you know Lancelot is a _prince_. He’s set to inherit all of Benoic and Gaunes.”

“Wow. Benoic _and_ Gaunes, huh. That’s very intimidating. I’ll have to watch my mouth,” said Gawain, who was himself set to inherit most of Europe. 

“Shut up,” mumbled Lancelot. He was undergoing a Situation which involved a lot of shame. “Lionel, this is— uhm— this is Gawain, he’s visiting from Rome.”

Lionel gave him a glance rife with suspicious dislike. “If that’s what we’re calling it. Fine, I won’t tell Pharien. And you owe me. Great move abandoning the rest of us to the mercy of eligible young women, asshole.” 

“Ooh! Lancelot, you should go have dinner with the eligible young women,” Gawain said. “You can leave me here with all your valuables. If Claudas comes back I’ll pretend to be you.”

“You’re too short,” said Lionel, because he was a teen and they have the psychic ability to guess a stranger's insecurities. 

“Hey, Lionel—” said Lancelot, cutting off an argument. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen a little black key, would you? I’ve lost it.” 

“What’s it for?” said Lionel suspiciously.

“His diary,” Gawain said.

“Jewelry box?” Lancelot said. 

This, it seemed, was the final straw. Lionel let out an affronted huff tinged with a bit of genuine concern, stamped his foot like a horse, and said, “What’s _wrong_ with you? You’re acting all— weird! Since when do you entertain visitors from Rome in your room? Or own jewelry? Or know how to write?”

Lancelot shot a preemptive glance at Gawain which threatened preventative anti-quip action, then turned back to Lionel spreading his hands. “Okay, okay, you’re right, I’m sorry for lying. Gawain is a— a friend that I met—” He paused to think of activities other Lancelot might have done and came up short. “A while back. He was sneaking in to visit because Claudas doesn’t like him. The key is his and it has— sentimental value.”

Gawain nodded enthusiastically. “It’s for my chastity belt.”

“I’m going to _throttle_ you,” said Lancelot.

“Joking!” he said quickly. “That was a joke!” 

“So you—” Lionel swallowed. “You’ve had— you’ve been— engaged in whatever this is for years? And you didn’t tell me?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Lancelot said, and, since he really did feel badly for lying to Lionel, it managed to sound quite earnest. “It’s not a big deal?” 

“It’s not?” said Gawain.

“Ahh. I just mean it’s not— not some huge secret it’s just— Claudas, you know?” Lancelot tried, hoping Lionel would know. He had no idea what he was implying but things tended to be complicated in this world and there was always something to imply. “Sorry?” 

Lionel’s face softened. “Oh. Well— I mean— he’s in no position to judge, right?”

“Oh?”

“That is— Pharien. You know. If your— Roman— even if he’s a thief, at least he’s not a convicted murderer.”

“Oh,” said Lancelot, who was learning quite a lot of information far too quickly. “Yes, I suppose.” He currently wanted nothing more than to expel Lionel from his chambers as soon as possible, and maybe Gawain along with him. “Uh. Key? Please, Lionel, it’s very important. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I find it.”

For a moment Lionel regarded him, his jaw working. “Fine,” he said at length, and waved a finger in Gawain’s direction. “If you do anything to him— I’ll— I’ll beat you to death like I did Dorien.”

“Woah,” said Gawain. “Cool.”

“I’m ignoring you!” Lionel announced. “I’ll be back with your dumb key.” Then he left the room, only slamming the door a little bit. 

Outside, birds twittered. The sun trickled through a window. Dust motes floated through the air. 

“So I feel like I was a bit—”

“I’m really sorry, I—”

“Oh, shit,” said Gawain. 

“You go first? Or I can.”

“Uh.” Gawain made some quick mental calculations. “Is it more magnanimous if I let you go first or go second?”

“Ah, you first I think? Doesn’t matter,” Lancelot said, quietly. He’d been doing a great deal of talking recently and he wasn’t enjoying it. 

“Uh—” Sitting back on his heels, Gawain took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I feel like I was so annoying there and made things worse for you. I felt like— it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

“It matters,” Lancelot said. As soon as the door closed, the nervous irritation had seeped away, and now he was just sort of sad and tired. “I’m not upset with you.” 

“No?” said Gawain meekly. “You could be, if you wanted. I feel like I wasn’t very nice.”

“I’m really not.”

“Well. Alright,” said Gawain, who sort of wanted to ask again but held himself back. “I’m sorry I was— myself. I was a bit thrown, uh, honestly.” 

Lancelot padded over to the wide bed and threw himself down on it next to Gawain, peering at him. “First off, stop— worrying. You’re still worrying. I can tell. Second, I mean, me too. Seeing Claudas… I don’t know.”

Gawain shifted awkwardly, like he’d intended for a moment to move closer, then changed his mind. “Would you be angry if I said— I’m jealous of you?” 

“What? For— which bit?” Then, as though he already knew: “He killed my father, you know.”

“Yeah, well everyone has done a little murder,” Gawain said, attempting to bring some homour in with little success. “I— I don’t want to get too dark. He seemed to be kind to you.” 

...which was something no one ever had been to Gawain. “Ah. I— maybe. Maybe here.” It didn’t change how Lancelot, the Lancelot that he knew himself to be, felt about the matter. “But I just know him as the man who ruined my mother— Hélène, not Viviane— ruined her life. Killed her husband and her brother-in-law, drove me and my cousins into hiding. I can’t forget that.” 

“I’m sorry,” said Gawain. For what had happened, and for feeling jealous anyway. Wordlessly, Lancelot reached an arm around Gawain to pull him closer. With a soft sigh, Gawain rested his head on Lancelot's shoulder.

“Your turn,” he said, almost a whisper. 

Laughing slightly, Lancelot said, “Mine isn’t as complicated. I just didn’t like seeing Claudas. And then I got stressed because— I mean— I know it’s not _me_ , but if I had been me here and you had been you here and then Lionel had occurred, I would have been so embarrassed. Because that _wasn’t_ me. Yeah?”

“Uh huh. What’s the not complicated thing?” 

They laughed then, not because it was funny but because the tension had left. “I just— I think other Lancelot is going to have a lot of very uncomfortable conversations with Lionel in the future. I feel bad for him.”

“Well,” said Gawain pragmatically, “other Gawain is going to be hanged until dead, so, could be worse.”

“Maybe other Gawain and Lancelot bonded in the dungeon, and I’ll decide to spare you.”

Gawain nodded speculatively. “Maybe other Gawain is less annoying than this one.” 

“I like this one, personally.”

“Oh. Well— thank you,” Gawain said haltingly, and turned his head to kiss Lancelot’s cheek. 

They sat like that for a second, listening to the birds outside and thinking about fathers. Then: “I have,” said Lancelot hesitantly, “a scheme.”

“I’d love to hear it.” 

Lancelot collapsed backwards onto the bed, which was covered in a thick fur. He worked it through his fingers and said, “How would you feel about setting up other Gawain to rob this whole castle and scam both me and Claudas?”

“That sounds fun,” Gawain said cheerfully, laying back on the fur next to Lancelot, on his side to look at him with a small smile. “By what mechanism do you propose I do this?” 

“We seem to appear in the clothes our counterparts were wearing before the switch, yes?”

“That follows. Nice circlet by the way.” 

Lancelot reached his hand to his forehead, noticing it for the first time. “Oh! Yes, this is stylish. Anyway. It occurs to me— were we to leave a few handy keys in your pockets—”

“Aha!”

“I’m not done.” He grinned. “And tie me up. That counts as clothes, right? Other Lancelot will show up in ropes? Leaving you to make your dastardly escape and rob the man who killed my father.”

“I love it. Incredibly stylish. I will have to drag you through the door, but that’ll be really funny I think.” 

“Is it ethical?” said Lancelot rhetorically. “No.”

“But?”

“I want Claudas to suffer,” he admitted. “And if other Lancelot has to suffer too, so be it. He’s a traitor.”

“That’s very… that’s some very me-style thinking,” said Gawain cautiously. “You’re suddenly very into the idea of a blood feud.”

“Oh— well— yes. But this is robbery. It’s different.”

“Okay, okay, fair. Well, hopefully—”

He was interrupted by more belligerent knocking at the door. “I found your stupid key,” came Lionel’s voice. “It was in the hallway just outside your room. I hate you.”

“Oh no,” said Lancelot. “One second.” With the slumped shoulders of someone who was realizing he’d irrevocably damaged his relationship with Lionel, he got up and walked to the door. 

Slotting the door open, Lionel passed the key through and Lancelot accepted it with the hem of his sleeve. “You better be at the banquet tonight,” Lionel said. “Or I’ll tell Claudas and Pharien about your— situation.”

“Thank you Lionel,” he said, and closed the door in his face. Then he locked it. “Alright, got the key. Time for crime.” 

Pushing himself off the bed, Gawain made a cursory examination of the room and came up empty-handed. “Where would you keep rope?”

“I keep rope in the box under my bed along with the other things. This Lancelot does not keep rope in his room.” He thought for a moment. “There are those ties on the curtains that would work.” 

“A curtain-based sexual rope adventure, I see,” said Gawain, trotting over and yanking the long cords off one by one. 

They popped off with a gruesome ripping noise, and Lancelot winced. “This poor Lancelot. He’s really going to have a lot to return to. Tied up, about to get robbed, and his curtains have been desecrated.”

“Not to mention he’s going to have a very uncomfortable conversation with Lionel,” Gawain added, grinning.

“We could write him a note. Explain matters to him. Might be an interesting series of revelations.”

“I'm going to get really good at writing notes,” Gawain said, meandering over to the writing desk set up before the window. “Wait— are you— were you— actually illiterate when you were twenty? Are you going to be able to read this?”

“Hm?” said Lancelot, and then remembered. “Oh. No, I pretended to be illiterate so people couldn’t try to communicate with me via writing. It worked pretty well for a while.”

Gawain turned with a stare of disbelief that dissolved into fond laughter. “Of course. Very clever.” He penned the letter with excessive flourish, signed his name over the bottom half of the paper, then handed it to Lancelot to sign in whatever space was left over for his cramped and messy scrawl. Finalized, it read:

_Hello, Lancelot! This is Gawain. You probably just met me in a dungeon. Lancelot and I are very much in love, but also we hate you ( you you) and think you should get robbed by me (not me me, dungeon me) for the crime of being happy and having a caring fatherly figure. If everything goes according to plan, you’re tied up right now. Sorry about your curtains. Also, Lionel thinks you’ve had an affair with a Roman thief. Cheerio!_

_—Gawain_

_This is all true. In addition, there are not even any swords in your room. Consider getting into murder as a hobby, it will help._

_—Lancelot_

There was a tiny square of space left at the bottom, into which Gawain carefully inserted two messy collections of lines that could have represented people, if you were generous. “That’s us.” 

“You have to write that down,” Lancelot pointed out. “You can’t just say it to me.”

Obediently, Gawain wrote _that’s us_ along with an arrow and a small heart. “Happy now?”

“Yes,” he said agreeably. “I found half a dozen keys while I was searching the room, and I don’t know if any of them are anything, but they’re yours. All in that drawer by the bed."

Gawain made his way over. "There is— there is _nothing_ in this drawer except keys." He pulled open the one underneath it. "This one has a solitary coin in it. What— I— what did you do with your _time_ at this age? No books, no rope, just a drawer full of keys."

"I mean," said Lancelot, "I did spend a lot of time practicing sword fighting. Not to sound arrogant but I do think it paid off."

“Yes, yes, you’re incredibly handsome and skilled. But I had lots of hobbies at your age and we’re basically tied, so, you know, maybe pick up embroidery or farming or something and fill this drawer. Is there any room left on the paper? I need to lambast this dork’s key drawer.” 

"No…" crooned Lancelot, deciding to let the tie comment rest in its inaccuracy, "come on, he's so sensitive. Gawain, he sleeps so much. He just spends so much time sleeping because he is so sad. Come on."

“Maybe this Lancelot doesn’t sleep all day. Claudas said he was usually up before noon. Maybe he laid awake staring at his keys, polishing them, counting them, arranging them by size, et cetera. I just don’t think it’s healthy, my dear.” 

"You sound deranged. Get over here and tie me up and leave poor younger Lancelot alone with his keys."

Gawain grinned and picked up the curtain ties. “He won’t even have the keys for comfort I’m afraid.” 

"Gawain," said Lancelot sternly, "if you don't tie me up right away I won't kiss you while you're doing it. Any further key comments?"

“Nope!” He said quickly, began to make the lips locked gesture, realized the dangerous irony, and abandoned the motion in favour of rushing over with the ad hoc rope. 

“I think I did a fairly decent job,” he said proudly when it was done. “I’m usually on the other end of this but I would bet even you’ll have some trouble getting out.” 

Lancelot tested his hands, which were pinned behind his back, and nodded, then leaned in for a final kiss. Regretfully, he pulled back after a moment and nodded at the black key on the table. "Ah— to be continued, I suppose. Depending."

“I mean, we have to get back eventually right— or find somewhere we’d rather— well, nevermind,” Gawain said lightly, and picked up the key. The Door appeared, luckily fairly close to the bed, so Lancelot wouldn’t have to be dragged awkwardly across the room. Together, they managed to shuffle through.

When Lancelot opened his eyes he was standing in the street. It looked something like the streets in the back corners of Camelot or Clamorgan; certainly it was cobbled with dull grey stones, and it was raining. The rain thunked off the brim of his hat, which he suddenly realised he had. 

The street around him was empty save for a woman huddled under a strange fan-looking apparatus which seemed to protect her from the rain. She was hurrying in the opposite direction and didn’t spare him a glance. It was dusk. 

Turning around curiously, he saw that behind him a door was cracked open slightly. A brass plaque on the front read: _Lancelot du Lac, Private Investigator._

Lancelot thus decided to Privately Investigate. He pushed the door open, stepping inside out of the rain, and when no one appeared to confront him he closed it behind him. A dark hallway stretched out before him, unornamented. At the far end stood another door. 

_Huh_ , thought Lancelot, and wondered if someone was about to try and stab him. That was generally what happened when he walked into strange dark hallways, although perhaps, from the name on the door, this strange dark hallway was _his_ strange dark hallway, and he would do the stabbing. One could always hope. 

As soon as he pushed the far door open he saw Gawain. 

“Oh!” Gawain said, sitting up hurriedly. He had been lounging on a table on the other side of the room in a position of over-exaggerated repose. “There you are! Is this your table? Sorry, I showed up like this and didn’t want to move in case I needed to be in this position for some reason.”

“It is my table,” Lancelot reported, smiling as he often did at Gawain antics. “I’m a Private Investigator.”

“Very fancy. What is that?” Gawain asked, surveying his own outfit for what appeared to be the first time. There wasn’t much of it.

Lancelot shrugged. “No idea. It’s very gloomy outside, though. Very atmospheric.”

“You excel at pathetic fallacy, darling. Anyway, what is this place? There’s a knife in one of the drawers. I checked to see if anything was worth stealing.”

“Was there?”

Gawain winked. “You’ll have to search me and check.”

“It doesn’t look like you have many pockets,” Lancelot pointed out dryly. But he was already crossing the small room to stand before the desk and kiss Gawain. Faintly, he could still hear the sound of the rain hammering down against the window on the other side of the room, could hear the front door creaking in the wind, but it faded into the background as he ran a hand down Gawain’s back. The fabric of his shirt was very soft, softer than any fabric Lancelot had felt before, and Gawain sighed slightly before pulling back and readjusting his position so that he was sitting upright, his legs dangling off the desk.

The kiss was growing more urgent, breathless— and then the door flew open.

“Sir, I need your help, I—” The voice stopped abruptly. “Oh. I ah— I think I have the wrong office.”

Gawain, who typically kept a cooler head than Lancelot in these sorts of situations, broke the kiss and peered over Lancelot’s shoulder. “This is the office of Pope Gregory,” he said evenly, “are you here for religious affairs?”

Blinking at him in shocked resentment from the doorway was Lamorak. “What— what are you—”

“I think that’s pretty obvious,” Gawain smirked. 

Lancelot, who was passing through various gates of embarrassment hell and quite enjoying the ride, finally mustered up the courage to give Lamorak a nod. “What are you— here for?”

“Leaving,” he said curtly. But he seemed glued in place by mortification. “I was— well, I think I’ll find another detective.” He still didn’t move. 

Caught between relief and curiosity, Lancelot waffled. “Uh— you— is there anything else you want to say?”

Lamorak’s mouth twitched. “I— I beg to ask you— how long have you— been in the acquaintance of Mr. Orkney?”

“About three minutes now,” Gawain reported chipperly. 

“I see,” said Lamorak bitterly. He worked the rim of his hat with one hand. “It seems you and I had the same idea, then. Mr. du Lac, you prove yourself very popular.”

“You were planning to make out with him on this desk?” Gawain asked, monopolizing the conversation by force of talking very quickly and loudly.

“No thank you,” Lancelot said politely. “Lamorak, I would prefer not to have desk sex with you, if it’s all the same to you.”

“You— how do you know my name?” 

Lancelot pursed his lips. “I uh— I know a lot of things. That’s what makes me such a good private investigator.”

“He’s investigating me very well,” Gawain added, as though this was a recommendation.

“Then— you already know why I came,” Lamorak said, studiously ignoring Gawain with great effort. “You’re going to let—” He gestured disparagingly at Gawain. “This person get away with murder.” 

Lancelot, who had let Gawain get away with murder many times, glanced between the two of them. It felt impolite to crush Lamorak’s hopes, and furthermore, Gawain probably wouldn’t mind, so he took a step away from the desk and crossed his arms. “Oh, sorry, say what, murder? That’s very bad.”

“Wonderful job, sweetheart, very convincing. I’m convinced.”

Lamorak, again ignoring the comment, gestured at Gawain. “He murdered my father. I know he did.” He seemed to have planned the conversation out in advance, and was determined to stay on script, scantily clad murderer aside.

“Oh!” said Lancelot. “Right. Yes, okay. I can help you with this.”

“I— I don’t believe you can,” Lamorak said, almost offended. “You were— canoodling.” 

“You’re thinking of the wrong type of paddle,” Gawain said. “This is foreplay.”

“I— I fucking hate you,” Lamorak said stiffly. “And I’ll see you in jail, without _his_ help.” 

He turned, his coat swishing behind him and his boots dripping water onto the floor. In the split second that it took before he stepped back out into the hallway, Lancelot glanced at Gawain, who was glancing at him. The glance said: _you or me?_

And evidently, the moment of hesitation was all it took for Gawain to decide the answer was _me._ Proving definitively that he had in fact stolen from Lancelot’s desk, Gawain drew a knife— practically a letter opener— crossed the room, and plunged it into the back of Lamorak’s neck, darting a hand around to hold clinically over his mouth. He stood there behind him for a moment then withdrew the knife, mostly avoiding the spray of arterial blood that followed. After a long second, Lamorak’s body thudded to the ground. “Huh,” said Gawain. “Wasn’t any funnier the second time.”

Lancelot, who had thought it was pretty funny, or at least aroused in him some sort of emotion, leant back against the desk. “He’s bleeding a lot. Do you think we should— I mean— you could have broken his neck or something less messy.”

“Not my office, not my problem,” Gawain said flippantly, wiping the knife on the curtains and tucking it away. The blood was really spraying, getting just everywhere, and together they watched as, with the stilling of his heart, the pressure pushing it out dimmed and the bleeding slowed to a pathetic trickle. 

“You’re framing me for murder,” Lancelot realised, dragging his eyes away from the scene on the floor. “You’re— you’re literally framing me for murder!”

“It’s very wicked of me,” agreed Gawain. “You’ll simply have to punish me.” 

“You think framing me for murder is an appropriate come-on?” said Lancelot, who was already crossing the room to lock the door.

“Is it not working? From where I’m standing it’s working.” Gawain was standing in a pool of blood and he stepped out of it daintily before allowing Lancelot to swing him around and slam him against the door. “In my defense,” he gasped, placing a finger on Lancelot’s lips to indicate he just wanted to say one more thing before his mouth was otherwise engaged. “In my defense I actually didn’t think of how hard this room would be to clean. Oops.”

“Uh huh,” Lancelot said warmly. “You’re lucky I’m not you, and won’t do your finger trick here.” 

“It’s only funny when I do it.” 

“Yeah? Funny? Is that why you do it?”

“Mostly I do it to get my way,” Gawain said lightly, removing his hand to hover feather-light at Lancelot’s waist. “Go on, then.”

He did. Gawain’s head thudded back against the door and he hummed as Lancelot ran a hand through his hair, pausing and drawing back from the kiss to wipe off a small drop of blood hovering on his cheekbone. Then, to stop him from saying any other of the unhelpful one-liners he surely had planned, he kissed him again, biting at his lip and leaning into the hand at his waist.

They went on like that for a spell, hands salaciously migrating, the breaths they took between kisses becoming more ragged, till they were mostly on the floor, legs in a tangle and faces flushed. Gawain lay with his head at the ninety degree angle between door and floor, so anyone standing on the other side could have seen brown curls peeking out under the doorframe. They certainly would have heard things, too, so it was fortunate that dusk was rushing into night and no one else was around. 

It took a lot longer than it should have for Gawain to glance to his right and notice the small black key lying unobtrusively under the desk. “Oh!” he said, and pointed. “Ahh— should we— I mean do we have to—?”

“Fuck,” said Lancelot eloquently. “It’s— it’s been there this long. Can it wait a bit longer?”

It could. 

Quite a bit later, when they had both at least pulled their shirts back on, Gawain padded over to the other side of the room and rattled through the drawers for a second before producing a sheaf of paper like the one the student in the hallway had had, along with a similar pen. He thought, scribbled something, and then placed the knife over the paper to weigh it down. 

“What did you say?” said Lancelot, who hadn’t bothered to stand up yet.

“Confessed to both murders. Least I can do,” Gawain said, in a voice which clearly indicated he thought he was being very generous and sexy and obliging.

“That’s very generous,” said Lancelot. “And sexy, and obliging.”

“I try to be all of those things.” 

With a sigh of protest, Lancelot pushed himself off the floor. “You sort of succeed! Sometimes. With me, at least.”

“I’ll take it!” Gawain retrieved the key from where he’d seen it earlier, and the door appeared. “Any last words?” 

“I hope other me has had an interesting time with you in Sebile’s dungeon,” said Lancelot, and they made their escape.

As soon as Lancelot opened his eyes he knew where he was. The familiar whorls in the ceiling, the hard mattress beneath him, the specific too-rough feel of the fur— he was home. He took a deep breath, savouring the faint scent of the wisteria outside his window and the light breeze drifting into his room. Faintly, he considered whether going back to sleep would be an option, considering he hadn’t slept in quite a while. 

Then he blinked and sat upright. “Gawain?”

There was no response. Well, that was fine, it was quite probable that if he was in his room Gawain would be too— perhaps Sebile had finally managed to drag them back to their world.

Cautiously, he looked around, and failed to see any difference between this and his room at home. He stood up and found himself in his own clothes, with his own boots left by the door, and his own sword in its customary place beside his bed. Failing to identify anything of note, he slipped on his boots and girded the sword upon his belt. Then he pinned on the warm cloak discarded over a chair, for now he wasn’t under the blankets, the breeze had a hint of chill, and there was no fire in the room.

There was no fire in the fireplace, he thought again. Then he listened, and heard none of the sounds of a castle that should have been hours in motion. Birds chirped outside, but no people called. There was no tapping on the floor above of other occupants stirring, nor rattling from the floor below of the household getting in order. He heard no distant music, laughter or conversation, a constant he’d learned to tune out, till it’s sudden absence felt violent.

Suddenly more urgent, he crossed to his door and exited into the hall. To his left, nothing; he breathed a sigh of relief that was rapidly aborted as he turned to the right and saw a body slumped along the wall a dozen yards down. A servant: he squinted and thought he recognized Castrius, a young man he’d exchanged encouraging words with a few times. There was no sign of blood or a struggle. He rushed over.

Cursory examination confirmed a lack of external injury, and provided both slow, steady breathing and a slow pulse. 

“Hello?” Lancelot asked quietly. Then, when this failed to provoke a response, loudly. Nothing. Tried jostling the young man’s shoulder to no affect. Suppressing a disappointed sigh, Lancelot rose. If, and this seemed quite unlikely, this was the only person affected, he’d find medical attention. In the much more likely scenario in which he wasn’t, larger problems presented themselves. 

The first order of business was Gawain’s room. It was empty, which was not particularly surprising considering how little time Gawain actually spent there. Lancelot, who had passed through the crux of constant anxiety in his youth and emerged menacingly unflappable, performed a brief check to find any notable differences between this and the room he knew. He found nothing. 

Where _were_ the most common places that Gawain frequented? Guinevere’s chambers, perhaps, so he exited the west wing and made a brief turn down a staircase, mentally charting an itinerary should Guinevere’s room prove fruitless as well. Down the stairs, out the door to the left, down the hallway— where half a dozen bodies slumped in the middle of the floor. A platter that had clearly once held food had been flung to the floor and a few shrivelled husks that might once have been fruit lurked among the collapsed servants. 

“Hm,” said Lancelot. He said it aloud in case anything villainous was listening and wanted to attack him. “Well, this isn’t good.”

He waited a few seconds. No one answered, or slunk menacingly out of the shadows, which he thought was sort of rude. “Suit yourself.”

So he kept going, finally reaching the entrance to Guinevere’s bower, where he paused for only a moment, as if he might hear laughter from inside, or clinking glasses, or the muttered tones of snide remarks. None were forthcoming, so with only some small trepidation he entered. 

Three bodies lay in the center of the floor, peaceful in their repose. One was Guinevere. The other two were Enide and Amide. A tangle of thread and several books lay scattered about them, as well as a bottle of wine tipped on its side. Lancelot padded over and inspected the stain on the carpet beside it: dried, old, dark brown. There was no liquid in the bottle. 

He turned to Guinevere, then, but only for a moment, because despite his cool head the sight of her lying blank and asleep hurt too much. Then he left.

The halls he paced continued to be scattered with bodies, most he recognized, some he didn’t, all sleeping soundly. Even the animals slept; he saw a caged bird asleep at the bottom of its cage, sleeping hounds collapsed beside their masters, a tiny mouse unconscious in the middle of the floor. He could hear songbirds twitter through the windows as he passed, but none crossed the windowsill into that quiet stone cavern.

Finally, he came to the throne room. Bodies lay upon bodies, courtiers and nobles and servants and petitioners collapsed like sheaves of grain in the field at harvest. The wide doors were open, and the throne was empty.

Gawain was at the foot of it, on the steps, asleep there, curls in disarray over his still face. He looked, in dress, much the same as the Gawain that Lancelot knew, save for an ornate circlet stretching across his forehead and an abundance of rings on his hands. The legal heir, perhaps. Lancelot rushed over to him, his heart tripping in its steady pace as he tried not to think about what would happen if he could not wake him and could not find the key. “Gawain,” he hissed, self-conscious to speak in the crowded silence. A quick glance around showed no one had woken up to laugh at him, so he repeated himself more loudly. “Gawain, I need you to wake up. You’re a different Gawain, now, you can wake up.”

Despite the logic of this argument, it failed to land, and he remained asleep, soft breaths sending one stray curl fluttering on his face. 

“If you don’t— if you don’t wake up right now I’ll be forced to throw you in the moat,” Lancelot said. “And neither of us want that. Look, I’ll— I’ll count to five. Five—” he gave up, and tried to shake Gawain awake, mostly gently. Nothing. 

“I really will throw you in the moat,” he tried, mostly to himself, hand sliding from Gawain’s shoulder down the length of his arm to settle on his motionless hand, gripping it loosely. 

Gawain’s eyes blinked open blearily. “I would love to be thrown in the moat,” he said, as though he had been sleeping for days instead of perhaps half an hour. “Especially after last night. Or morning. Or— wait. Oh! Yes!”

All of Lancelot’s breath rushed out of his body at once and a smile split his face in relief. “Yes! I got— I got really scared there. You’re awake?”

“Dimensions!” Gawain remembered, nodding. He retracted his hand from Lancelot’s grip to rub at his eyes. “And we just… got….” He sighed softly, and leaned forward to rest his head on Lancelot’s chest. “Uhm… going back to sleep… few more…”

“No you aren’t!” Lancelot said quickly, shoving him off. But it was no use. Whatever cure had been affected was very immediately disaffected. Gawain slumped sideways back onto the stone floor. Lancelot barely managed to catch his head before it hit the ground. “No, no! Wake up again!”

Gawain did not oblige. Pursing his lips, Lancelot made some quick mental calculations and settled, as he so often did, on violence. The slap was not particularly forceful, but it did make a loud _crack_ noise, and Gawain’s eyes blinked open briefly again. He had just enough time to say “Oh, that was fu…” before his head lolled and he was asleep once more.

The immediate relief he’d felt upon not being alone was replaced now with even worse and more bitter concern. But he had done something. One must try to be logical about these things, even when one sort of wanted to go back to bed and cry. No sound had woken the other sleepers, so it couldn’t have been the sound of the blow. Shaking had done nothing, so it couldn’t be the pain. Lancelot tried touching Gawain’s face, first with two fingers, then an open palm. At first, nothing, but then his eyelids began to flutter again. Lancelot dimmed his excitement and did not move, not wanting to stop whatever it was he was doing correctly. 

“You have your hand on my face,” Gawain remarked curiously, his voice groggy. “I’m not entirely sure what it’s doing there. Your thumb is dangerously close to my mouth, you know.”

“Don’t bite it off, I think it’s keeping you awake, somehow,” Lancelot said, unable to resist smiling anyway. “Uhm— in summary— we’re in Camelot and everyone is magically asleep, except me.”

“It could probably keep me awake from inside my mouth too,” said Gawain, ignoring the rest of this.

“You’re horrid,” Lancelot said, fondly. “I’m still trying to figure out why this woke you up, so— I don’t know what to do now.” 

“Maybe it would wake me up more if you put your fingers in my mouth,” Gawain offered. He appeared to be operating on some rear, sleep-added part of his brain that didn’t contend with the facts of the situation and preferred to think only about fingers and, possibly, fingering.

“This was really much easier when you were asleep.” Lancelot studied his hand on Gawain’s face a moment, trying to ignore the Gawain aspect. “Oh. Oh!”

He felt very foolish. “I think it’s my ring. I’ll put it on your hand and— listen to me. Are you listening? You look vacant. Listen. If I pass out, the ring will wake me up.” 

This got Gawain to squint a bit and drag himself out of his nice fantasy world. “Uh, let’s not do that. Let’s not do anything that involves any point in time in which one of us is not actively wearing the ring. You could drop it while trying to put it on me, and then _neither_ one of us would ever get fingers in our mouth ever again. Think about that, Lancelot.”

“I don’t know why you won’t stop thinking about it. That is— you are right though. Take my hand, then?” 

“Oh!” said Gawain, his eyebrows raising. “Moving fast, I see. Hold hands? Really? We haven’t even fucked yet, sir, and you already want to hold hands…”

“I know it’s bold,” Lancelot said, lacing their hands together. “Forgive me for being forward.” 

With what appeared to be a Herculean effort of will, Gawain dragged himself to sitting. “Okay,” he said, “okay, I’m awake now. I’m up. I feel like I drank three bottles of wine last night and then went to an orgy. Did I do any of that?”

Lancelot thought about it. “I mean, in the fullness of time, considering your, you, and all, I think yes. But last night, no. Last night you did a murder and then we came here.” 

“Ah.” He closed his eyes briefly and tilted his head back as though begging God to refresh his memory. Then he opened them again, a clearer and more conscious expression on his face. With a smile that indicated it was a joke, he said, “No drinks after the murder? Too bad.”

“Next time. Are you— can you stand up? I think— best to find the key and leave. Very quickly.” 

Together they managed to drag Gawain to standing without letting go of each other’s hands. Gawain blinked around at the surrounding room with its dozens of people, all asleep, all quiet as the dead, and for the first time a hint of pallor entered his face. “Oh, God,” he said. 

“Yeah.”

“I was talking about fingering in front of all these cursed sleeping people…”

“It was a little gauche,” Lancelot agreed, “but you were very sleepy. I advise you don’t look at the faces. It’s quite troubling, but they are all alive. I do wonder—”

“Hm?”

Lancelot stepped carefully down from the dais, pulling Gawain along with him. “It depends how altruistic we want to be. I hear birds outside the castle. I wonder if we were to— drag people outside— might they wake up?”

“Well lord, Lancelot, not everyone. That would take— I’m tired just thinking about it. Only the people we really like. That seems fair.” 

It would probably take a day or two if they worked quickly. Lancelot decided not to push the issue. There was a voice in his head, a small, guilty voice that didn’t talk much, and it said: _you could save hundreds, but Gawain is tired._ He ignored it and said, “I only like the servants. Oh, and Guinevere’s friends. I feel like everyone else had it coming a bit.”

Gawain nodded. “My brothers definitely had it coming, but I’m afraid I’m obligated to add them to the list. And Yvain— God, this is going to take forever.” 

“Every servant, most of the women, and some of your relatives?” He grimaced. “Oh, Gawain, this conversation sounds so bad. Do you hear how bad this conversation sounds?”

Gawain waved his free hand dismissively. “It’s fine. Look, once we get all of them out, if they’re determined, they can use— grappling hooks to drag everyone else out. It would work. And when other you gets back— maybe leave him a note. Hey—” Gawain stopped suddenly, realizing something at the same time Lancelot did. 

“Uh, yeah,” said Lancelot hollowly. He wondered what sort of a person he was that he had been awake this whole time and not even chosen to wake Guinevere and Gawain. He tried not to remember that there were times in his life where he may have done the same, where it may have been terribly appealing to let such a curse take him, and disregard the gift his ring offered. He tried not to think about it. “Once we find the key and get Guinevere out, maybe we should give the ring to her.” 

“She doesn’t enjoy manual labour very much,” said Gawain dubiously.

“Alright, well, we drag out Guinevere and two burly fellows of her choice, then.” 

“Gareth and Yva—”

“It’s going to be Gareth and Yvain, yeah, I agree.” Lancelot let out a deep breath. “Alright, well, I feel a lot better about this plan of action morally, and also you don’t have to do as much. I think this is a win-win, yes? And as soon as we get out of here you can take a nap or whatever it is you want to do.”

“I hope the next dimension we go to is the pillow dimension,” Gawain said forlornly. “Okay, well, onwards and upwards.” 

They found Guinevere again and managed, with much grumbling from Gawain that masked the discomfort he felt with her pale and lifeless form, to drag her out of her chambers, through the main hall of the castle, and out the front gates. Sun streamed down, gilding the tips of trees and the late morning dew on the grass and the wings of birds brave enough to swoop nearby. Lancelot sighed in relief and laid Guinevere’s head carefully on the ground at the same time as Gawain let her feet drop unceremoniously. 

They waited, both of them nervous despite their convictions. Then, just as Lancelot was about to say something, her eyes fluttered open, found Lancelot’s face, and narrowed. “If this is a prank,” she said, “I’m going to have you executed.”

“I helped!” Gawain said, exuberance cutting through fatigue. “Hi Guinevere. Not a prank.” 

She frowned and sat up, regarding them both with open doubt. “Then why am lying in the dirt? Lancelot, do you have any idea how expensive this fabric is?” 

“I do!” He nodded earnestly. The Guinevere he knew owned the same dress, and in fact the fabric was a gift from Ysabele, and had probably been paid for only in kisses. “I’ve got so much terrible news to tell you that’s going to confuse you very much.”

“Oh, let me, Lancelot,” Gawain asked. “Guinevere, you know I can explain it with more flair.” 

But a look of concern had started to creep across her elegant face. “No, I think Lancelot had better,” she said slowly, “I believe he will get to the point more quickly.” Then, as if it had just occurred to her: “Why am I on the ground and— ah. Why can’t I remember the last thing I did?”

“Guinevere your words hurt me. Lancelot, give her your cloak.”

Lancelot unpinned his cloak and draped it over Guinevere. “So, I’ll start with this dimension? Camelot is under some sort of sleeping curse. It stopped affecting you as soon as we dragged— carried you out, and my ring makes me immune. Next we were going to drag out Yvain and Gareth and give them the ring to get everyone else.” 

She accepted this with more grace than anyone else would have. “That’s very delegatory of you.”

He nodded. “Thank you. The next thing is— uhm. So Sebile— we’re from a different dimension, Sebile was high, and we replaced your Gawain and Lancelot so— we have to find this key then we’ll leave. And your Gawain and Lancelot will appear in our place.”

This earned them both carefully scrutinizing stares. Lancelot could practically see the cogs turning in her mind: how best to utilize this? But then her lips pursed slightly and she gave them a small nod. “I appreciate you taking the time to save me, then.”

“Of course! Haha,” Gawain chuckled awkwardly. “Obviously we would.” 

“He’s being mean,” said Lancelot, to forestall any patented Guinevere barbs. “He wanted to drag you out and leave everyone else without giving you the ring.”

“Oh, that’s fine, then.” Guinevere wasn’t often bothered by such trifling matters as morals. That's what made her such a good friend. But she was bothered by inefficiency, as she reminded them with a thin viper smile. “You’d better get to waking your relatives, then.”

Gawain gave a mock salute and turned on his heel, tugging on Lancelot's hand to say that he was certainly going now, and he wasn’t letting go, so it was following him or wrestling here in the garden. Lancelot chose to follow him back into the castle, and felt some of the strength flag from his grip as they crossed the threshold.

It took them an hour to locate both Yvain and Gareth and to drag them outside. Another was spent in a protracted argument during which Gawain’s morals, personality, and legitimacy as a victim of magical dimension-hopping were subjected to stinging interrogation from his family members. Finally they extracted themselves and headed back into the castle to search for the key. 

A survey of the throne room proved unhelpful. It was a very large castle, Gawain pointed out sniffily. There were many places a key could be sequestered. They were just about to give up and move to a different room when Gawain froze, his head cocked to one side. “Lancelot,” he said, and his hand was cold in Lancelot’s, “why is Arthur’s crown on the dais?”

Lancelot turned. It was a crown he would always recognize, elegant in its simplicity, adorned only with a single black gemstone in the center. And it was lying abandoned next to the throne, with its bearer nowhere in sight. 

They exchanged a wordless glance. Something in the scene was troubling, even more troubling than the sleeping figures scattered around the room. When they rushed over, they found no trace of blood by the crown— nothing to show how it had gotten there, either. Until Lancelot saw the way the shadows fell behind the throne and, pointing, dragged Gawain to the back. 

No one was supposed to see the back of the throne. The dais was the highest you could go: Arthur sat there, resting his hands on intricately carved wooden armrests, with Gawain to his right on a smaller chair and Guinevere to his left. The back side was not meant to be shown. It was wood, uncarved, covered in peeling paint and a few rusty nails. 

Arthur sat slumped against it, facing away from the rest of the hall. His hands, regal and gloved, clutched a familiar black key. And his eyes were wide open. 

“Oh Jesus Fucking Christ,” Gawain said, a little too loud, then cringed at his volume in the silent, chapel-like atmosphere. “I fucking hate this. I hate this. I want to leave right now. Fuck.” 

Lancelot hummed and crouched down in front of his king, or at least something that looked like his king. With one hand he peeled up Arthur’s eyelid. “He’s not awake. Don’t worry. This is odd, though.”

“Oh, that makes everything better! Not worried at all now! This is my least favourite dimension. Are you gonna stab him?” 

Lancelot shot him a look. “Do you want me to?”

Shrugging helplessly, Gawain gestured at the throne vaguely with his free hand. “I mean I think other Gawain is the heir so— I don’t know. No. I don’t want you to, but if you stab him we can leave, and I want to leave. So I suppose don’t stab him unless you’re feeling really stabby.”

“I’m always feeling stabby. It’s my main emotion,” Lancelot reported with a stony face. But Gawain seemed too anxious to gauge whether he was serious or not, so after a second of blank staring he softened his face. “I’m not going to— wantonly stab your uncle just because he creeped you out. I’m just going to take the key without stabbing him. The stabbing doesn’t have to happen, you know.”

“Cool. Cool. Up to you,” Gawain said, holding onto his hand much more tightly than strictly necessary. “It's your prerogative. Stab-rogative.” 

“Uh-huh. Right.” Lancelot gave his hand a squeeze. “I think it’s time to get out of here. We can stab someone next time and it’ll be more fun. Promise.”

Before Gawain could say anything else perplexing, he reached out and grabbed the key with the hem of his shirt. For a second Arthur’s hand gripped onto it with the dull strength of the dead. But then he managed to wrench it out, and if he thought he saw Arthur’s eyes narrow briefly in anger, then he didn’t tell Gawain. 

“Outside,” Gawain murmured. “Outside right away. God, I hate this place.”

“It’s not my favourite,” Lancelot agreed. They retreated to outside, Gawain looking intensely ahead towards the exit and not daring to glance at anything else before they could feel sunshine on their skin. When they finally emerged, all three of their rescuees breathed a collective sigh of relief. 

“Take this,” said Lancelot, slipping his hand from Gawain’s and chucking his ring towards Guinevere. She caught it neatly. “I do have— I was wondering. Do you have any idea what happened here?”

She looked somewhere between irritation and exhaustion, which meant she was really a little afraid. “Nothing happened. Everything was normal, and then I woke up in the garden.” 

“And Arthur?”

“What about Arthur?”

Lancelot shot Gawain a glance. His face was amiable and blank, and his eyes shuttered. When he spoke his voice betrayed no hint of the nerves he’d shown inside. “He’s alright. We found him inside— I knew you would worry.”

“Aha,” said Guinevere. Something twitched in her face. “Right.”

“Well— I suppose we should be off, then,” Lancelot said, uncomfortable with the deception and less than thrilled with this dimension. “Eh— nice to— meet you all, I suppose.”

The three of them made various expressions that communicated how unusual of a situation it was, that they were very grateful, and that they had a lot of business to be getting on with. Yvain raised a hand. “Ah— I just want to say— thank you for saving us. You saved our lives.”

“Uh, of course,” said Lancelot. To forestall any further social interaction he passed the key into his other hand. Immediately the door popped into existence, and he heard Gawain breathe out a faint sigh of relief. 

“Cheerio, everyone,” said Gawain, giving them all a brief wave. “I’m sure everything will go fine until you try to wake up Arthur.”

And before either they or Lancelot could ask what he meant by that, he pulled Lancelot through the door.


	3. III. Canticum: B. Simeonis Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for descriptions of violence, references to torture, and implied cannibalism.

“Uh, excuse me?” a middle aged man asked officiously. He was standing in front of Lancelot, a counter between them, holding a greyish cylinder. The rest of Lancelot’s surroundings promised to be equally peculiar, but for the moment he was very much caught up in sudden awkwardness.

“Hi?”

“Yeah, I asked for soy milk? This is almond milk. I’m hate almonds you incompetent fuck. You could have fucking killed me, from dying of not liking almonds. You know what— who’s in charge here?” 

Someone materialized behind Lancelot and placed a hand on his back. Lancelot, who was firmly of the opinion that no one should be touching his back except for Guinevere or Gawain, bristled at this, and was about to turn and say something very threatening when he realised it was Kay. 

He looked younger than the Kay Lancelot knew— perhaps his own age, or at least the age he knew he appeared to be. Almost thirty. His red hair was close-cropped and he wore a long coat somewhat like the one Lancelot had been wearing when the Lamorak incident had occurred. And he was glaring daggers at the man who had accosted Lancelot.

“Excuse me?” he snapped. One of his infamous moods. “How much did you pay for that?”

“Three bucks,” said the man, his brow furrowed. 

“For three bucks you get to ask for a return. You don’t get to swear at my employees. I hope you’ll either be apologizing or tipping Lancelot twenty dollars to be your therapist, you pathetic excuse for a customer.”

Across the room, Lancelot caught sight of Gawain. He was sitting at a small table by the brightly-coloured wall with an odd shiny rectangle in front of him, watching the scene unfold with an expression of awe. They made brief eye contact before Lancelot turned back to the man on the other side of the counter, who was working his jaw furiously. “I could have you tried in court for this,” he ground out. “It’s— it’s breach of libel rights. Or something.”

Both Gawain and Lancelot looked at Kay. He gave the man a small thin expression that was sort of like a smile in the way that an alligator’s base expression is sort of like a smile. “You could have us tried in court,” he said, and there was nothing in his tone except dry disdain, “or you could claim trial by combat.”

“I— what?”

“Lancelot could attack you,” Kay offered. “He would deserve it.”

It was easy to see, from the outside, how Kay was joking. It would not do to have the staff of his coffee shop attack customers. Even from across the room and with no context, Gawain could tell he was joking, because he knew Kay better than Lancelot did. Lancelot, however, was not clear on the matter, and was already reaching for the first hazardous-looking implement he could find. It looked a bit like a piece of armour, and it had bits of glass on it, but he wasn’t concerned with its proper use. He wrenched it from the table behind him, dragging a strange black cord, and before Kay or the man could do anything other than look surprised he had vaulted over the counter and brought the whole contraption down on the man’s skull. 

There was a sickening crack. He heard Kay shriek behind him, and someone further back in the room screamed, which was funny. In the corner Gawain leaned back against the wall and steepled his hands behind his head. Lancelot dropped the heavy metal item and reached down to pull up the man by his hair, already matted with blood. He was still alive, so he let him drop to the floor again in a crumpled heap and brought the heel of his boot down at full force onto his nose. More screams, now, and someone yelling a series of numbers. People were so odd. One would think they’d never seen him beat a man to death before. 

“He’s still conscious, darling,” commented Gawain from the corner. “You could probably break a few fingers before he passes out.”

“I was thinking collarbone,” said Lancelot vaguely, staring down at the writhing man surrounded by an ever-growing pool of blood. “Cut off his air flow…”

It was then that he realised someone was trying to get his attention. He turned. Kay was standing with his arms spread out, face pale, looking more horrified than Lancelot had ever seen him. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?” he said.

In the corner, Gawain raised his eyebrows. “Lancelot, I don’t think they like violence much here.”

“Oh,” said Lancelot, feeling very embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Sorry?” screeched Kay. 

In the back of the room, various heads poked out, drawn and lined with terror. Someone made retching noises. Someone else was crying. 

“Oh, God.” Lancelot shifted his feet and winced when they squeaked loudly on the pool of blood. “I’m— I’m really sorry, everyone. I didn’t mean to— well, I did. Uh. I’m from another dimension?”

There was some coughing from behind the counter and then Perceval poked his head up. “Like Doctor Who?”

That got Gawain to stand up and hurry over, waving his hands. “No, no, he’s not a doctor. I’m a doctor. I have leeches in my room and everything— I know how to fix humour imbalances—”

He was cut off by more sobs from the back of the room, and the sound of someone speaking softly. Lancelot squinted. He could just hear what sounded like a request for backup. “Oh, dear,” he murmured to Gawain, who was looking at him helplessly. “Ah, do you see the key anywhere?”

Gawain grimaced. “Sorry.” Then, with an expression that indicated everything was going to be perfectly alright, he turned to the throng at the back of the room. “Ah, does anyone back there see a little black key? If you could find it I promise we’ll be out of your hair in just a second.”

There was a flurry of hushed whispers. Lancelot leaned his head towards Gawain’s. “Do you think I need to threaten them?”

“Mmm, they seem perfectly threatened, dear,” said Gawain brightly. “What a happy, innocent lot. If this is how they react to a little light violence, I’m sure they have no problems at all. Must be nice to live a life without conflict.”

“Sounds boring,” said Lancelot, as various frenzied footsteps and rattling noises indicated a key search was being performed. In the background, he heard a faint wail that sounded like a large bird. “Imagine how drearily _nice_ other you must be.”

“Hey, I’m nice!” He actually managed to look genuine, which was impressive, considering the amount of blood on his shoes. “Tell me one time I’ve been not nice.”

Kay made some frantic coughing noises from behind the counter. Lancelot ignored him. “Well,” he murmured, “earlier today you did incorporate murder into our foreplay, hmm?”

“That was fine, actually,” said Gawain confidently. “I thought it was really nice of me. It certainly made _you_ happy.”

Various words started to be yelled in the panicked crowd behind the counter, the most notable of which was _key._ No one seemed to want to risk emerging. 

Finally, Gaheris raised his hand. “Hey, uh, is this it?” 

“Yes!” chirped Gawain, and trotted over to take it from him, giving the paralyzed Kay a pat on the shoulder as he passed by. “Perfect. Three points to Gaheris. Thank you for playing, everyone!”

The wailing noise in the background was growing louder— it was fortunate that at that moment the door popped into existence, hovering to the side of Lancelot’s victim. Lancelot stepped over the body and paused. “Ah— we skipped out on our game last time, you know.”

“Oh?” said Gawain. Then he blinked. “Oh! Yes.” Giving a last wave to the traumatized onlookers, he hooked a hand in the collar of Lancelot’s clingy shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. It wasn’t particularly chaste, and whether the faint taste of blood originated from Lancelot’s encounter with the customer or the sharp bite to the lip Gawain gave him, neither could tell. They had just gotten hands involved a bit more when yelling sounded outside. Gawain pulled back, winked at the crowd, and pushed Lancelot backward through the door.

When Gawain woke his hands were warm. They were warm, he discovered upon glancing down, because they were holding a very hot tankard made of ceramic which contained a light brown liquid. Reasoning that anything he was holding probably tasted good, he brought it to his lips and took a sip. The sweetness took him by surprise, pleasantly so, and he glanced around the little room in which he sat. 

The walls were wood, like some of the inns he had stayed at over the years, and were covered with careful sketches— flowers, trees, a few portraits in a remarkably realistic style. With only messy grey lines, the artist had captured not only form but the play of light upon form. 

It was midmorning, he could tell from the cast of the sun streaming through a broad window lined by floral curtains. It shone onto a wooden floor, onto stacks of books piled under the windowsill, and onto an empty chair next to Gawain’s. Outside birds sang.

“Neat,” said Gawain, and took another drink of his sweet drink. 

Then he heard a pleasantly familiar voice from the next room. “How do you tell if bread is done?” Lancelot asked, a hint of concern in his voice that hadn’t yet turned to panic. 

“Uh.” Gawain had never had to think about the process of bread being cooked before. “Maybe… poke it? I’m glad you’re here, by the way. Nice ambience.”

“Gawain!” he called happily. “I would— come in and— it’s a time sensitive bread affair in here— it looks done, I’m taking it out, I don’t—” 

There was some shuffling and Lancelot appeared behind him, clutching a loaf of bread in a checkered cloth. Gawain raised his eyebrows. “We are poor!” he realised.

“But the ambience is very nice,” Lancelot said, examining the bread. He technically had only been there for the end of the bread process but still felt a sort of proprietary pride in the result. “Try this bread.” 

Gawain did. "Okay," he decided after a moment. "Actually, this is worth it. Try my sweet milk drink."

He accepted the warm cup from Gawian in exchange for the bread and took a cautious sip. “Oh, it’s very sweet. Nice, though. I like this place so far.” 

"I get the distinct impression that we don't quite deserve it after— well, after your little stunt last time." He gave Lancelot a soft smile to indicate no hard feelings. "I had been noticing a trend, you see— last time we did violent murder we got landed with the sleep curse."

“Maybe it was a reward. Like we were rewarded with nice naps. Maybe the universe likes when we kill,” Lancelot proposed hopefully. 

This seemed as possible as anything else. Gawain hummed and took another bite of bread. "I guess so. Sit down, the sun is lovely."

They sat down together, and ate the bread, and passed the drink back and forth, as midmorning moved comfortably towards noon. They sat there for a little longer together, till Lancelot hummed, stood, and announced he was exploring. 

“Sounds good,” said Gawain, leaning back in his seat and stretching out his arms behind him. “You know— we haven’t slept in a non-cused context in quite a while. If you take the outside and I take the inside and we make sure there’s nothing planning to kill us here, it might be a good idea to stay the night.”

“I did promise a pillow dimension,” Lancelot acknowledged. “Barring murder, nap. It’s a plan.” 

And so they parted ways; Lancelot out the front door of the small cottage, and Gawain staying inside to make a full inspection and eat anything else he could find. Outside, the sun shone down, stronger now, almost noon, and as Lancelot exited a rabbit startled on the opposite side of the garden that greeted him. He gave it a wave. “Hello, rabbit,” he said, in case it planned to attack him. 

It jetted away with no signs of malevolence, so he turned to the garden instead.

He wasn’t exactly a plant expert but there sure seemed to be plants growing, in the little plot attached to the side of the structure. A chicken wandered past the garden, which was guarded by a chicken-height fence, which the bird regarded with disgust before wandering off. It all seemed terribly pleasant, if confusing. It was all very small. 

Past the garden he found an orchard, a barn, and a cow. It mooed at him. Lancelot smiled at it. “Gawain is going to be so mad about all of this,” he told the cow. “Wait until I tell him about all the implied manual labour.”

He left the cow in its peaceful mooing and made a complete circuit of the cottage, finding nothing else of note except a small path behind the orchard that led deeper into the woods. A well, perhaps— he set off down it. 

After a few minutes’ walking he did find a well, a very nicely built one with a smooth bucket and a little bell hanging from the top bar for decoration. It was all very picturesque and elegant, and he was about to turn and head back to the cottage when the breeze shifted slightly. He stopped, tilted his head, and sniffed the air. 

It was not a _bad_ smell, per se, but it was also not a smell that one typically found in the middle of the woods. He circled around the well and peered into the forest beyond. There was no path, not beyond this point, and the trees arched high up into the sky. And, very faintly, he could smell drying meat. 

It took a hundred or so paces to find the source. He stopped in his tracks, realized he didn’t have a sword with him, and listened for any indication that whatever had done this was still around. Nothing but silence, and the distant sound of birdsong. 

“Huh,” said Lancelot, and headed back to the cottage.

Eventually the simply joy of laying around in the sun was outweighed by a hope for more bread, and Gawain set to going through the house he found himself in. The largest room was the one he was in, then the kitchen from which Lancelot had emerged, and finally a bedroom with one bed. The sheets weren’t satin but the blankets looked warm, and sunlight streamed in through another quaint window, alighting on the floral pillowcases. More books sat neatly on the windowsill, along with a potted geranium. Gawain snorted. Neither one of them had made the bed that morning, and the covers were in a tangle.

With a private smile he retreated to the kitchen— traditional home of bread— and began going through the cupboards. Mostly dry goods, some of which he recognized, most of which he didn’t. Most everything he knew about food came from a fine silver platter, not a cupboard. 

Below the very modern-looking sink was a long cupboard full of preserved goods— olives, pickles, and mountains and mountains of jam of all different types. He shuffled through them, impressed despite himself. This Gawain and Lancelot kept themselves busy.

The next cupboard held more neat clay jars, some with delicate flower designs or geometric patterns, some plain. He opened a few at random, found preserved strips of meat, dried fruit, an unfamiliar grain, and what looked like small dried bell peppers. He was about to move on to another room when he saw a smaller, unornamented jar at the back of the cabinet. 

He shook it to see if it had anything in it and was rewarded with a peculiar rattling noise. Beans, perhaps. He pulled it out and twisted off the lid. 

It took a moment for him to process what he was seeing. At first he thought it was rice: it was the right colour, but rice didn’t have shrivelled, trailing roots and a yellowish sheen, and it didn’t make that god awful rattling noise. He almost dropped the jar and only just managed to place it on the counter, revulsion running through him. It was filled to the three-quarters mark with human teeth.

“Ah, this is teeth. This is really teeth huh. Christ.” He looked away, considered he might be wrong, and might look back and find out it was in fact large fucked up rice. He stood there for a minute or so before taking the chance to peer over. “Nope— no, still teeth. God damnit.” 

He checked the jar in case either of them had written their name on it, and then realised that even if it was Lancelot’s, and not his, he was still living in a house with a man who collected teeth. This was not excellent. He was about to head out of the kitchen and check the rest of the rooms for, perhaps, more teeth, when the front door swung open to admit Lancelot.

“Lancelot. Teeth,” Gawain said, as if he was making an introduction.

“I have those.” 

“ _Yeah,_ Lancelot, you sure do! You sure do have— Lancelot there is a teeth jar full of teeth. Also it’s kind of stopped being a word at this point. We have a mouth bones situation, Lancelot.” 

Lancelot obediently walked over and looked at the teeth. “Those are teeth,” he agreed. “How are you feeling about them?”

“I don’t love them.” 

“Did you just… find them? Where were they?”

Gawain waved a hand helplessly at the cupboard. “They were in the— the teeth box, I guess, if function determines form— with food. Do we eat teeth? Can you eat teeth?” 

“I? Me specifically? I’ve never tried.” Lancelot wandered over to peer into the cupboard. It looked like a normal cupboard. He picked up one of the other jars and twisted it open. “Did you see this?”

“What?” Gawain glanced over. “Oh. The jerky?” “Mm.” Then, as though commenting on the style of decor, he said, “I think it’s human flesh.”

“Wonderful! What a normal house! So glad we have this cupboard! Fuck. What— God. What do we do about this.” Despite his loud protests, Gawain wasn’t really terribly upset. At the moment he seemed to be settled in hysterical irritation. 

Lancelot replaced the meat jar into the cabinet and, instead of answering Gawain, gently confiscated the teeth jar from him and inspected it. “Did you notice these are all the same tooth?”

“What? I— the exact same tooth?”

“No, no, not copies of each other.” Ignoring the distasteful wrinkle on Gawain’s brow, he reached into the jar and pulled a couple out. “Look. I think it’s… right canine? It’s not all teeth from a few people, it’s one tooth from… a lot of people. Huh!”

“God, don’t touch them, Lancelot, gross.” Gawain paused. “Ah. Oh. Oh that’s a lot of— uh huh. Oh I don’t— don’t like this one!”

Giving him an amused smile, Lancelot dropped the teeth back in the teeth jar and placed it down. Then he crossed his arms and leant back on the counter. “So, I did find something odd in the forest that you’re not going to like at all.”

Gawain groaned and looked heavenward. “Fuck, alright, fine, get it over with. Go for it, horrify me.” 

“Are you sure? I can just say it’s unsettling even to me and leave it at that.”

After considering the option for a moment, Gawain shook his head. “No, no what I imagine will be worse. What did you find?” 

“Right, well. If you go into the forest past the orchard for a bit, there’s a part of the forest where there’s—” Lancelot stopped, shot Gawain a sympathetic glance. “Uh. Where there’s a lot of strips of dried skin hanging from all the tree branches.”

Gawain flinched. “Okay. What I was imagining wasn’t worse. Uh. I really— That’s not— Oh, I fucking hate this!” 

His face was contorted in dismayed revulsion, but not the fear that had consumed him in the sleep dimension. Still, Lancelot reached out and grabbed his hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. “I had wondered— if whatever did the skin trees was still out there, and we should try to leave as soon as possible. But I suspect— uhm. Well.”

Gawain exhaled slowly. “Okay. Those are your skin trees then?” 

It was the stupidest of situations in which to feel embarrassed, but Lancelot did nonetheless, blushing furiously. “I don’t— I mean— the teeth must be yours, then, I’m not the _only_ one who—- I mean— hng.”

“We don’t _know_ they’re my teeth,” Gawain said defensively. “But if it’ll make you feel better, alright, I’ll take responsibility for the teeth. Get me a pen so I can write my name on the jar.” 

“They’re _polished_ ,” Lancelot pointed out. “If I was going to— to keep up a large collection of other people’s teeth, I wouldn’t polish them. Also, I wouldn’t keep teeth, I would— nevermind.”

“No, go on,” said Gawain generously. “Let me guess, you would make skin trees?” 

He got a dour look in return for this. “I would not make skin trees,” pronounced Lancelot. “I’m not unhinged.”

“Hm, clearly.” Gawain looked unconvinced, but if he did privately think Lancelot was in fact unhinged, it must not have bothered him much. Lancelot’s hand was still in his, and he raised it to his lips and almost thoughtlessly placed a kiss there. “Let’s find the key, burn this place down and get the fuck out, huh?” 

It had been, if you didn’t count the brief unconsciousness induced by trans-dimensional travel, and Gawain’s cursed naps, quite a good number of hours since they had last rested. “I mean,” said Lancelot carefully, “considering we at least know we’re the most dangerous things in quite a ways, we could stay the night. I haven’t slept in a while. And there’s food and such.”

Gawain looked at him disbelievingly. “You want to sleep in the teeth house adjacent to the skin forest and eat human flesh?”

“It’s not— it’s not _that_ bad.” Lancelot gave him a weak chuckle tinged with concern that Gawain was genuinely disapproving of him. “I don’t think the bread had, uh, meat in it. And I presume there’s a bed. And— we haven’t drunk water in ages. We should hydrate. I didn’t want to— bring it up, before, but we don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck hopping from dimension to dimension.”

Gawain frowned, seemed about to argue— then shrugged. “Fuck. Yeah, alright. You’re right, of course, but I wish you weren’t. There is a bed.” 

This garnered a sigh of relief, and Lancelot stepped back, rubbing his hands together. “Alright, then. Shall we look for this key?”

Their key was not in the kitchen. It was not in the bedroom, or the living room, or the little outhouse, or the cupboard-sized room with a bathtub in it. It was not in the garden or the orchard or the barn. Gawain suggested, bleakly, that it might be in the well by the skin forest, but Lancelot assured him that he had looked. In desperation, Gawain even dumped out the teeth jar to see if it was inside. It wasn’t, and now there were teeth all over the floor.

“I didn’t think this through,” Gawain admitted, staring at the teeth in dismay.

“I’ll pick up the teeth if you could go through that cabinet,” Lancelot offered, he thought incredibly chivalrously.

“Wonderful.”

When you look at a jar of teeth, you think to yourself, boy that’s a lot of teeth. But picking a jar’s worth of teeth off the ground one by one presents a new level entirely of teeth number acquaintance. You think, boy that’s a lot of teeth, then notice the jar is only an eighth full.

These were the kind of thoughts Lancelot was having when his hand, grasping for a canine, brushed over an irregularity in the floor. “That’s irregular,” he said aloud, running his hand over it again. “Gawain, there’s an irregularity in the floor. I wonder if it’s a trapdoor. That’s what irregularities tend to be.”

“That’s just what I wanted to hear!” Gawain said, grimacing, and kneeling to join Lancelot on the floor. “Well, let’s see it.” 

It took ten minutes to even find the side that was meant to open, and another five minutes of scrabbling at it with a kitchen knife before Lancelot finally managed to get the trapdoor open. Immediately, cold air wafted upward, tinged with the faint scent of wine. He peered down the newly visible flight of stairs. “Looks like a wine cellar. Smells like a wine cellar, at least.”

“Wine cellars in teeth houses aren’t usually hidden under secret trap doors,” Gawain pointed out sensibly and with much trepidation. Then he heaved out a rattling breath and twisted his mouth. “Okay, I’m done being disturbed. It’s going to be skeletons or something, right? I’ve seen dead bodies. I’ve killed a lot of people. This is a day on the job.”

Lancelot nodded encouragingly. “That’s a good attitude to have. Follow me?” 

Carefully, being sure not to trip on the steep stairs, they edged down into the darkness. It was pitch black; the trickle of light from the kitchen didn’t make it past the second step. Eventually Lancelot’s questing hand found an odd knob, and when he pushed it down light flickered on overhead. It looked like one of Sebile or Morgan’s fairy lights, but it was fixed to the ceiling and contained in glass.

What it showed was a wine cellar. There were a few barrels with spigots that probably contained wine, and bottles lined up on two walls, that were also clearly wine bottles, and some large jars of what looked like cider, and no dead bodies.

“That’s certainly a pleasant surprise.” Contents of the cellar revealed, it ceased to hold power, and Gawain descended the stairs to inspect the selection. “Did we have a vineyard?” 

Lancelot shook his head. “But there’s a road a little way on the opposite side from the well. Must be a town nearby. Do you want a drink?”

“Always and especially now. Which of these looks the most expensive?”

Running his hand over the elegant labels, Lancelot made a brief tour of the wine shelves. “I don’t know. They all look expensive to me. We could try a few?”

“A wine tasting. Very fancy, yes, lets. I’ll fetch glasses.” If Gawain remembered the teeth and skin forest, he no longer cared about it much, and made haste back up to the kitchen to acquire a couple of the pristinely made glasses he had seen earlier, along with a corkscrew. When he ducked back into the cellar, Lancelot had pulled out a selection of bottles. He had chosen them based off of how pretty he thought their labels were, and hoped this was a measurement of their quality. “They all have very fancy names and dates,” he reported.

“We’ll start with the newest and work back.” Gawain handed him the glasses to pour, and after a second of struggling with the corkscrew, Lancelot managed to get the cork out. A pleasant, fruity aroma drifted out— blackberries, perhaps. Lancelot poured a finger into each of their glasses. 

“To Sebile!” Gawain pronounced, lifting his glass.

Lancelot clinked it with his own. “And to each other!”

“Aw. Lame,” said Gawain with a small smile, and took a long drink. “This is very good. He may collect teeth but other me at least has good taste in wine.” 

Taking a smaller, more considerate sip, Lancelot hummed. Pulled a face. “Way too sweet. I think there’s honey in this. You can have the rest of mine, I’ll trade you.”

“Trade it with you for a kiss?” Gawain asked, lowering his glass. 

Lancelot smiled. “That seems fair to me.” 

It was a very atmospheric location, if you ignored the teeth in a jar up in the kitchen and the forest full of dried skin at the end of the property, which they both did. Lancelot carefully poured his portion of the wine into Gawain’s glass and then leaned forward, slowly, his hand lifting up to the side of Gawain’s face. Eagerly, Gawain closed the gap, kissing him, humming faintly, leaning into the hand in his hair. He could taste the remnants of the blackberry wine on Lancelot’s lips and then, when they both opened their mouths, on his tongue as well. After a long moment he pulled back, gave a sly smile, and gestured to the next bottle. “Hopefully you’ll hate this one too, hm?”

“Let’s hope,” he said, and opened the second bottle. It had a sharper aroma, and promised to be a very dry red wine. He grinned and raised his eyebrows at Gawain. “No, this one’s good. You will have to maintain your chastity this time.”

Again, he poured a finger for each of them. Gawain took a sniff and grimaced. “It smells very expensive and so I shall drink it,” he said, “but I’m not happy about it. I just like to be a wastrel.”

“You’re generously guarding my honour by making sure I don’t drink too much,” Lancelot offered, watching Gawain take a reluctant drink. “You brute. You’re not even savouring it— come on, you’re always harping on me— stop laughing, I’m very serious, this dismays me immensely and I’m going to leave you.”

“Uh huh?” said Gawain, who had now tossed back the whole thing and was sniggering gleefully. “Over this, not the teeth jar?”

“Maybe the teeth jar is a joint project,” Lancelot speculated. “I can't assume it’s you just because it seems like your style.”

“The teeth jar is my style?” Gawain was joke offended, but also halfway to real offended. 

Instead of answering immediately, Lancelot took another sip of the dry red wine and raised an eyebrow at him. “Gawain, I say this with all— you know, all due recognition and appropriate disclaimers— I do take entire responsibility for, uh, the skin forest. I have, uhm— skinned people— oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I’m not judging about the teeth jar.”

Humour is theorized to be an alternative evolved for processing horror. Gawain grinned. “Yeah— that’s— that's so _embarrassing._ Flaying, ugh, what are you twelve?” 

“It wasn’t— I didn’t do it for _fun_ — I was just curious,” hissed Lancelot, blushing as red as a strawberry. “It was a one-off thing! I don’t have a skin forest planned, I’m just saying, you know, _if_ I was a little bit of an evil person— uh— I could. I could do a skin forest. Not that I would, because that was— creepy.”

“Uh huh. You put too much thought into that,” Gawain said fondly, reaching out to poke his flushed face. “Weird man.” 

“Hmnrgh,” said Lancelot. He finished off his wine and tried to stop thinking about flaying and whether or not it was endearingly odd. “Ah— next bottle?”

“That’s the spirit!”

He grabbed one at random. He would guess from the bottle and cork that it had been bottled more recently than the first two and hoped it would be alright. With a spring in his step, he popped back over to his spot next to Gawain, tossing the bottle up once into the air and catching it after a turn. 

“Showoff,” snorted Gawain.

If he had a knife, he’d get the cork out with real flourish. But skin forest notwithstanding, he was unarmed, so he popped off the cork the old fashioned way. 

“Huh,” he said after a moment. 

“Huh?”

Lancelot frowned and breathed in deeply. “Well,” he said after a moment, “I don’t think that’s wine.”

With a disbelieving look, Gawain sighed, disgruntled. “We were having such a nice time, damn it. Blood? That would be something I’d think was funny, probably.” 

An expression crossed Lancelot’s face like he was trying very hard not to be a bit of a bastard, and not entirely succeeding. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Oh, something about Bacchus, probably— pretentious nonsense that boils down to similar colour.” Gawain waved a hand in dismissive self awareness. “Are you— going to make sure?” 

“What?” He blinked, not entirely sure whether it was a joke or not. “I mean, I have a pretty good sense of smell. A _very_ good sense of smell. I do know what blood smells like.”

“Maybe it’s blood scented wine.” 

“Do you _want_ me to drink it?” Before Gawain could respond, he continued, “You want me to drink the blood? You who kiss me on the regular want me to drink the blood? Is this a— a thing I should be aware of?”

Gawain smirked. “Are you stalling?” 

If he admitted it to himself, he was curious. He was also worried, because taking a sip of a bottle full of blood was, even he could tell, generally considered morally incorrect behaviour. If the flaying had been worthy of light concern, then this might result in genuine judgement. 

On the other hand, Gawain was flirting with him. He made eye contact and carefully raised the bottle to his lips.

Well, it was definitely blood. In terms of mouth experience, it was definitely drinking blood. “That's blood.” 

“Uh huh? What’s your blood rating?”

“Worse than the second wine, about the same as the first.” Then he fixed Gawain with a look of challenge. “Your turn.” 

“Me? Lancelot, I’m— I’m shocked you would insinuate I would ever do such a thing.” He brought his hand to his chest, an expression of mock innocence on his face. “I am but a virginal innocent intent on— stop it, stop doing that— intent on sewing the way of the Lord— or is it reaping—?”

“First sewing, then reaping. When the bibles— bear fruit. Go forth and multiply. Here.” Lancelot handed him the bottle and he took it without thinking, then glanced down at it in offended surprise at how it could come to be there. 

“Next you’ll be seducing me into the carnal ways of the devil,” he said. “Bottoms up.” Lancelot watched, amused, as he took a long drag, made a contemplative expression, and shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know what I expected, it tastes like blood. I mean, I’ve certainly drunk a lot of blood before, it’s generally just— fresh and consensual.”

“You’ve swallowed worse,” Lancelot observed mildly. 

Gawain shot him a grin. “Depends on your perspective, I suppose. Hey, do you think this was a morally reprehensible act?”

“I mean, not drinking blood won’t make whoever’s blood this is alive,” pointed out Lancelot, as if this was very sensible. “But I, you know I’m not an expert.” 

Overhead, the light flickered briefly, and Gawain shot it a mischievous look. “Cool. In that case I’m having another sip.”

“I think too much could make you sick,” Lancelot said. He didn’t seem all that concerned. 

“Oh— okay. Nevermind. It’s probably— some kind of a monstrous act or something, anyway. Shall we make sure the key isn’t down here, then?”

Lancelot nodded. “I think— if it hasn’t been anywhere else it’s almost certainly down here. I’ll take that corner and— and you take the other, then we can sort of work towards each other?” 

They did, searching methodically through shelves and even checking inside the barrels (with some trepidation, as both half expected to find more grisly remnants of things that had once been people; fortunately no such incidents occurred). After half an hour they were about to give up the search when Gawain’s questing hand found a small lever, pressed it on instinct, and then jumped back when half a shelf unhinged from the wall and swung open towards him. “Shit,” he said. “I have an even worse feeling about this than everything else we’ve found here.”

Lancelot had to agree. After all, what could be in the hidden room of a house with a teeth jar just shoved in a cupboard for anyone to see? “I’ll go first.” 

Three paces or so down the thin corridor onto which the door opened, he was already glad that he had led the way. He held a hand up behind him to stop Gawain from following immediately, and continued on. He could just make out another door at the far end. A sharp scent was drifting through the air— soap, perhaps, lye or lemongrass, something sharp and medicinal.

“It smells nice,” Gawain commented from several yards behind him. “Like expensive scented oils. Maybe that’s what they’re hiding down here. Hopefully.” 

The door was not locked. It was very obviously not locked, in the sort of way that a door was not locked when you knew that if you had found it without its owners’ consent, you might as well go in and see, because you were dead anyway. Very faintly, Lancelot felt his heart rate pick up. “Gawain,” he said, “if you were to have a secret door in your wine cellar, where you could do anything at all, what would you do?”

Gawain thought about it with a worried frown. “Probably store all my fancy soap. Uh. If I were the sort of me who would have a teeth jar? Let me get in character.” He paused. “Okay, I have a teeth jar and think it’s funny to bottle blood like wine. Probably I’d want to— god. Recreate all those weird medical diagrams. I always thought they couldn’t possibly be accurate.” 

Nodding, Lancelot said, “Well, let’s see how in character you’ve gotten.” He pushed open the door. From behind, Gawain couldn’t see past Lancelot’s silhouette, and watched anxiously as he stood for a long moment, not moving a hair. Then he coughed weakly. “You certainly— hm. Yes. There’s certainly a lot of— dissection going on. Gawain, I’m not sure you want to— uh— you might want to stay in the wine cellar.”

“Yes, it’s not like I’ve ever seen— seen people cut up before. Not like that’s my profession, at which I happen to excel—! It’s my dissection room, isn’t it?” 

“There’s definitely a lot of— meat,” said Lancelot carefully. “I’m not insinuating you faint at blood. I’m just a little shaken myself and I’m not sure you want to— I’m not sure you’d enjoy an image of what you could do if you were worse than you are.”

Gently but firmly, Gawain pushed past him. “I can handle it.” 

He could, of course. Lancelot, who could also handle it but was not enjoying it, stepped back into the hallway with a relieved slump of the shoulders as soon as Gawain eclipsed the view from the doorway. “I— God— I suppose the key must be in there.”

“I’ll find it,” Gawain said, voice steady but flat. “It’s my— mess.” 

Relieved, Lancelot turned away from the doorway and retreated to the wine cellar as noises of vague searching emanated from the hidden room. The air was fresher here, still cool and relaxing but without the acidic scent of the hallway. At random, he grabbed another bottle off of a shelf, fumbled with the corkscrew, checked it wasn’t blood, and took a long sip. “Any luck?”

“Ah— well I’ve found it,” Gawain called back hesitantly. “It’s— inside someone.” 

Lancelot blinked. “Oh! Do you want me to— come pull it out?”

“I’ll get it— could you go— boil some water? I’ll be up right behind you.” 

He wondered, for a second, if he should walk right back down by the corridor, grab Gawain’s hand, and yank him out without heeding the protests. If he did, though, Gawain would be disgruntled and hurt for days. So instead he walked back up the stairs to the kitchen, where the sun was still shining and the birds were still singing outside and the flowers were still bobbing in the breeze. 

It took him quite a few minutes to figure out that the odd metal part of the counter could be set on fire with the matches in a bowl beside it, and he delayed further by pretending he couldn’t find the kettle. Fifteen minutes, he hoped, would be enough time for Gawain to undergo whatever battle between pride and fear that was currently occurring in his brain.

It was, and as he poured the boiling water into an available bowl, Gawain clattered up the stairs, pale, covered in blood, and holding the key. “I, uh— there’s so much blood that it doesn’t count as touching. Isn’t that funny.” 

Lancelot chuckled despite himself and then immediately stopped. “Was I— sorry, that was funny. How are you holding up?”

He didn’t answer immediately, in favour of flinging the bloody key down on the counter, grabbing a cloth and dunking it into the water. “Unscathed. There any soap?” 

“There— is soap.” Lancelot cast a hesitant glance at the block of it next to the sink. “However, it does occur to me that— well, soap is made from goose fat generally, right?”

“I don’t know, I’m king of Scotland and Norway.”

“Ah, well— well it’s made of goose fat. And we don’t— seem to have any geese. If you—”

Gawain sighed heavily. “The fun never ends, does it.” 

“There’s something deeply wrong with us,” agreed Lancelot, but there was a bit of humour in the sentiment. “I wouldn’t— worry about it, though. It’s not _us_ , not really. You know that, right?”

“Hm, not technically,” Gawain didn’t seem convinced, still wiping up blood with the cloth. The clean water had turned a turgid, swirling pink, and his hands weren’t close to clean. The cloth would have to be thrown out. 

“Not technically? Do you have plans to— take to torture and cannibalism that you haven’t told me about?”

The cloth plunged back into the water ineffectually. “No, no but— but it _could_ be us. There’s something in them that must also be in us. I mean— lord, I’m considering using the human fat soap because it smells like lavender and I’m terrible.” 

Amused despite himself, Lancelot chucked it at him. “Might as well, you’ve got the excuse of being all bloody. Which is rather fetching, by the way, but that’s— that’s not the point. Oops.”

Gawain laughed dryly. “Oops. Get me another cloth, sweetheart? Then we’ll see.” 

The drawer by the sink was fortunately stacked full of them, mostly checkered or in bright floral patterns. Lancelot grabbed a white one in the hopes it would be ruined and tossed it at him. “I’m just saying— you _don’t_ keep a jar full of teeth, so what’s the point of worrying over the fact that you might? You don’t. You’re safe from being a Gawain who keeps a teeth jar by virtue of not keeping a teeth jar. Get it?”

“You’ve a very practical mind, my love,” said Gawain. “It works well for you. I will never be the sort of person with a dissection room, but to me— that isn’t the same as never being someone who could have one. It’s very silly and I’m sure I’ll forget it sooner than I should, so don’t worry about me too much.” 

“I’m a little worried. You look like you’re about to cry.”

“I’m not about to cry. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried since I was nineteen, Lancelot, you know that.”

Lancelot regarded him softly. The sun was setting, and the light was gentle and warm, incongruously so. He looked tired. “I know. That worries me, too.” 

In the golden sunlight streaking through the window, with his face cast in long shadows and his shirt bloody and sleeves bloody and hands bloody, still bloody, even as he clutched the soap and dripped pink water into the bowl and onto the cloth, Gawain looked like an iconographic saint. His hair was haloed and gilted, his mouth twisted up at the corners, and his eyes dark. “You don’t need to worry about me, Lancelot,” he said, tilting his head like a bird, “but it’s very sweet. You’re very sweet. It’s nice to know you’re— looking out for me.”

“Of course,” Lancelot murmured, because all he was thinking of was memorizing this moment, every detail down to the motes of dust that looked like shimmering flakes of gold. 

“Are you okay? You look like _you’re_ about to cry now.”

“I’m always about to cry. It’s a permanent— sort of situation. I’m okay. Let's sleep and then leave this place,” he wiped a stray tear away and smiled slightly. 

It was night. A solitary candle flickered on the bedside table, casting long shadows around the picturesque floral room and the books stacked up against every wall. Gawain lay awake, stock still, trying very hard not to think.

It’s hard not to think when there is nothing to do but think. He felt paralysed. If there was a fire, or some such, of course he could bolt upright and make all the appropriate motions, but the idea of transmitting instructions from his mind to his body was troubling distant. The ceiling was as quaintly rustic as the rest of the house, thick wood beams, clean and smooth and unfamiliar. He tried to reach back into himself, to the version of himself to whom it was a very well known sight. He knew it was there. 

After a certain length of time— he was not sure how long; it could have been thirty minutes or three hours— he felt Lancelot’s hand trail down his arm and find his own, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You’re awake,” Lancelot murmured, his own voice thick with sleep, “I can tell.”

“All these nature sounds. Birds and such, I don’t trust them,” he said easily, when a minute before he’d have sworn he couldn’t move his tongue. “You know I don’t fall asleep as easily as you do.” 

He felt Lancelot squirm against his side, resettling so his right arm was still interwoven with Gawain’s and his left arm was draped across Gawain’s chest. “What’s on your mind?”

Finally looking away from the ceiling, Gawain turned his head just enough to see Lancelot beside him. “I don’t know,” he admitted. 

“Hmm.” For a second he though Lancelot was going to trot out a nice platitude and let the matter drop, but then he said, “So it’s nothing to do with your concerns over being the sort of person who could torture people and like it?”

“People are always saying there’s something the matter with me,” Gawain said, and there was some dark humour in it. “Does it concern you? Were you concerned? You saw the same thing I did, so why are you still here?” 

“Gawain,” said Lancelot plainly, with an edge in his voice that indicated he might start crying or he might start laughing and no one including him could predict which, “if you’re too dangerous to be loved then there’s no hope at all for me.”

“Oh, well,” started Gawain, whose tendency for self pity often slipped into self-absorption, “It’s not the same with you. It’s charming when you do it.” 

“It is?” breathed Lancelot, and then pulled back slightly and shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “Wait, no, you don’t get to— mm— what’s the word—”

“Galvanocentrize?”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

Gawain laughed, a little half heartedly. “Just a very ironic word I invented. Go on.” 

“Well— here’s the thing.” He wriggled a bit against Gawain’s side, and took a shaky sort of breath. “We both know why— of the two of us, you would be more anatomically inclined. It’s a less _personal_ cruelty. Less about pain. And that’s not— that’s not an innuendo, stop making that face. I mean, it could be an innuendo, but— nevermind.”

“No, no, go on. My thoughts are pure and virginal and I seek to be— to be filled with your— don’t laugh at me! — your wisdom.” 

“Uh huh? Right now? In the murder house?”

Gawain managed a look of offended horror. “How dare you insinuate— and you say I was finding innuendo. Filthy. I came to you for edification in— ugh, I’m tired. What were you going to say? I completely forgot.” 

“Uh— hold on, let me remember. Edifying you. Uhm, anatomy— oh! Anatomical inclination. We were— you were having a crisis of conscience.”

“You’re oversimplifying. I was experiencing very philosophical insomniac ennui,” Gawain corrected. “But yes. You were about to make a point.” 

“Oh.” Lancelot frowned. He was very sleepy. “What was it?”

“Something very nice, probably. You’re too nice to me, you know. Let me get away with too much.” 

He looked so mournful it almost broke Lancelot’s heart. Gently, he ran his thumb across the back of Gawain’s hand, unsure how to tackle a comment that seemed to him as wide and looming as a cliff face. He opted for simple. “You’re nice to me. Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”

Gawain thought for a small while. “I don’t know. Or, I do know, but it sounds very childish.” 

“Mhm?”

“I don’t think you— I don’t think it’s right for you to be nice to me. I’m very paranoid and— and you know you’d have been better off if you never met me. And I didn’t want to admit it, because— well, you know I’m a coward, but now I suppose you’re stuck with me, aren’t you?” This all seemed to come out very quickly, and without his permission. 

“What? I— what?” In the silence, Lancelot blinked a bit, trying to make the words make anymore sense. “What are you _talking_ about? Gawain, if I hadn’t met you, I— I mean— I might be— not much of anyone.”

“Oh,” Gawain said, less a verbalization and more the sound of air being knocked out of one. He wanted to protest that this wasn’t true, but it felt terribly selfish to ask for more when he knew it would never be enough. _I love you and I will never believe you,_ he said in his mind, but he only said the first part aloud. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” said Lancelot, as though he was an easy thing to love, as though they were easy words to say and mean. “And I’m not stuck with you. Except— in a very immediate sense of Sebile’s spell. But I don’t think that’s what you meant.”

“I’m very deep and I can mean a lot of things at once because I read so many books as a child,” said Gawain, in the voice which said if he were anyone else he would be sobbing. “...are you going to cry? Will you cry for me? I don’t know how. I’m sorry. I’m tired.” 

And that _did_ make Lancelot cry, just a bit, not because he had been asked but because it hurt to watch Gawain lie with his face drawn in the flickering shadows and his eyes haunted and his hand as cold as death. When he could speak again, and had wiped the tears from his face, he said, “You don’t think— Gawain, you haven’t considered that I might think it’s _you_ who’s going to find out one day you don’t love me? That I’m the problem?”

“You’re _never_ a problem,” Gawain said with sudden desperate intensity. “I— I’ve been alive and loved you for much longer now than I’ve been alive and haven’t. I couldn’t stop, I’d— it would unmake me.” 

There were no tears left in Lancelot, and so instead he leaned his head down a bit and brushed a kiss on Gawain’s cheekbone. “Even then, I’d keep loving whatever was left over. I promise.”

Gawain wrapped arms around him to catch him there, shaking a little, pressed them together and sighed deeply and achingly, muttered _I love you, I love you, love you, love, love, love, love!”_ till the words slurred into slow breathing, and they lay there together, asleep or at rest, till the morning. 

It was raining when Gawain finally opened his eyes, a soft, gentle rain that pattered against the window. The curtains, half-opened, admitted a pale dawn light that shone down onto the flower-patterned sheets. He pulled them up higher to hide from the chill and realised he was alone. 

The house was silent aside from the drumming of the rain. He lay, suddenly afraid almost to breathe, as though he would suddenly remember that everything about Lancelot had been a dream, and he was Gawain, only Gawain, alone with himself and his thoughts as he had always been. It was a foolish fear. He knew the difference between dreams and life, and Lancelot was alive, had always been alive, and would outlive him, probably. But still he was afraid. He was always afraid.

Gawain blinked once, as if to banish some vision, and forced himself to sit up, the way he might when he was very injured from battle and trying to pretend it didn’t make him feel so frightened and childish and lonely. The blanket was very warm and comforting, and the sound of the rain pleasant, and the air smelled like flowers and wet grass. He was about to force himself out of bed when he heard the front door open.

Exhaling in relief, he stretched and hoped Lancelot's mysterious Lancelot Senses would inform him that Gawain was awake. He was proved correct: after a second Lancelot entered the bedroom in reverse, clutching a tray in his hands. “Uhm,” he said, “I woke up very early and couldn’t fall back to sleep and so I decided to figure out how to make the hot drink. I think I did it.”

“Well, that’s wonderful news, and even more comforted am I to see the tables turned,” Gawain said, holding out a hand for the cup. 

It was certainly hot. “It’s hot,” he said cheerfully. “I’m very impressed with how hot it is.” He grinned. “Like you.”

“I tend to run cold actually,” Lancelot said, because that slang meaning of hot hadn't been coined yet. Gawain had just now invented it. “Like a lizard.”

“What’s a lizard?”

“Baby dragon,” said Lancelot, who knew what a lizard was but didn’t want to ruin the whimsy. 

“I think they’re pretty hot animals, Lancelot. Temperature-wise. Their blood burns through metal.”

“But— but their blood is cold,” Lancelot repeated. He didn’t know what it meant but he’d heard Morgan say it once. 

Instead of answering, Gawain held up a finger, gingerly put down the cup, and began taking off his shirt.

“Hold— hold on what’s— right here? Now? I mean yes, but—”

“Look,” Gawain said, gesturing to his shoulder. “Here is a burn I got from dragon blood. It was hot.” 

“Oh,” said Lancelot, sounding a bit disappointed. He leaned forward and peered at Gawain’s shoulder, a smile playing on his lips. “Hmm. Could have been some hot coals in the shape of a dragon. That’s what it looks like to me.”

“No, it was definitely a dragon. I know because—” Gawain paused for a moment as if deciding whether the anecdote was too embarrassing to share, then recklessly forged onward. “Because I pulled out it’s teeth and— okay, in light of recent events that sounds really bad— but there’s this— there’s a myth that if you plant a dragon's tooth and water it with blood, it’ll grow into a man. I wanted to see if it was true. So unless coals have teeth— good lord, is that what my point was? I got a bit lost in the weeds.” 

The bed creaked as Lancelot sat down beside him, leaning over to take a sip from the cup he had given to Gawain and ignoring the protests this incurred. “You seem like you’re feeling better.”

“Hm, sleep does that. And I’m glad to be leaving, too. And— and I’ve settled on a good idea. One might even call it a scheme and you know how fond I am of schemes.” 

“I do know you love schemes.”

“And it’s a killing scheme, too, a real intersection of hobbies— give me that back,” Gawain snatched the cup back. “It was a gift. That means it’s mine. Anyway, yes, I thought we should poison that well before we go.” 

He took a long sip of the drink, and didn't notice Lancelot’s face till he lowered the cup. It was not an expression that Lancelot generally wore when presented with the possibility of murder. He opened his mouth, started to say something, thought better of it, and then decided to plough ahead regardless. “You— you want to kill yourself,” he said baldly.

“God, you make it sound— no, no, not— not this me. Just the one that would— I mean you saw. Doesn’t he deserve to die?” 

“But you were just saying last night— well.” He twisted his mouth. “To be blunt— can I be blunt?”

“You’re often blunt, it’s refreshing,” Gawain said, taking another drink, as if he didn’t quite get what the issue was. 

Lancelot shot him an indecipherable look. “I’m not going to let you— act out killing yourself because you’re convinced that being the same person as this Gawain means you deserve to die.” Then, because he had already dug his grave with regards to saying very dramatic things, he added, “And killing him won’t kill whatever part of yourself you’re worried is the same.”

Gawain put down the cup. “Well. Likely it won’t. But it will make this road safer to travel, won’t it?” 

“Uh— is this a metaphor? I’m confused.”

“No, I mean it quite literally,” Gawain gestured out the window. “All those teeth belonged to people, didn’t they? Your foliage didn’t grow from nothing. That’s what good knights are meant to do, things like this. In theory, anyway.” 

“Oh. Ah— _yes_ ,” said Lancelot, “but also I don’t think that’s why you’re— oh, hold on.”

The sound of a bell ringing had suddenly echoed throughout the whole house. It was light and irritating.

“Very rude,” Gawain chided the bell, finally getting out of bed to follow Lancelot out of the room curiously. 

The bell kept ringing. They followed the sound to the front door, and then, when there was clearly no one right outside, out the door to the garden path and all the way to the front gate. A man was standing there, his expression incongruously cheerful with the time of day and the weather. 

“Oh my God,” muttered Gawain. “This is— this is a little bit funny.”

“Hello, sir, good morning!” chirped Lanval, waving at Lancelot, who was in the lead. Then his eyes flitted past to Gawain, and he trailed off. “....and, uh, good— good morning?”

“Good morning,” Gawain said, very pleasantly. “Is there anything we can do for you?” 

Lanval, for Lanval it was, although his hair was cropped short and he had a burn scar on one side of his face, opened his mouth and then closed it again. “You’re not— uh, sir, you’re not wearing a shirt!”

“Oh,” Gawain said, forcing a flush, and smiling bashfully, “I hadn’t noticed, I’ve just risen from bed.” 

“Bed!” yelped Lanval, staring at a point slightly to the left of Gawain’s ear. “Queenie was just saying— Queenie?” He had turned behind with a cheerful hand gesture as though to refer to a companion, but there was no one there. “I swear she was just here. She must have stayed on the path and I didn’t hear her say so. She does that… disappears a lot.”

“Uh huh?” said Lancelot. He didn’t know if he should inform Lanval that it was quite probable his girlfriend was a fairy queen, or indeed if fairy queens existed in this world.

From behind him, Gawain rested an arm on his shoulder and cocked his head at Lanval. “It is very early in the morning,” he observed. “What was it you were looking for?”

“Ah— I— there’s a sign that said you have fresh jam for sale.”

“Oh, of course,” Gawain said easily. Then paused. “That makes sense.”

It was a very quiet, soft sort of morning. The drip of the rain muffled out occasional bird calls, and overall there really was no one in this part of the forest. That’s what other Lancelot would be thinking, probably, but he had made the fatal mistake of going toe to toe with _this_ Lancelot, who really wasn’t a big proponent of skinning people alive while his partner practiced dissection in the basement. Other Lancelot would probably rely on other Gawain to lure Lanval inside and then find a way of chasing off Queenie, or else he would chase Lanval to the side of the house with the well— the side far from the road. This Lancelot, however, could play dumb, and chase him in the wrong direction. “Gawain,” he said casually, his hand drifting to the knife he had stuck into his belt, “if you grab his hands I’ll carve out his eyes.”

Both Lanval and Gawain froze in shock, and a second passed in slow motion like the moment after a pebble hits water. Gawain, a flash of genuine concern flitting over his face, said, “What?”

And that was all the time it took for Lanval to turn and run.

Lancelot gave him a second to get a head start, turning to Gawain with what he hoped was a reassuring expression, indicating he had not in fact snapped. Gawain didn’t look terribly convinced, but that would be a bridge to cross after he was done terrifying Lanval. Then he pushed the gate open and strode off down the path at a fast enough gait that he at least looked like he was trying, but not fast enough that he ran the risk of actually catching up. He scanned his brain for something menacing to yell. He wasn’t used to yelling things at people; he preferred to say things very quietly and with no fanfare. “Uhm— we’re going to bury you in the orchard with the rest of the dead bodies, you bastard!”

There. That was good, threatening and exposition-carrying. He hoped there really were bodies in the orchard, that would help immensely. Lanval was beginning to pull ahead, and Lancelot sped up just a bit, enough to look like he may close the gap but not quite enough to, before stopping abruptly as Lanval burst onto the road. 

Through the trees he heard Lanval blubbering at Queenie, who was in fact apparently a real person and did not sound at all fantastical, and then the sound of the two of them setting off at a run down the road. He stepped back. 

“Huh,” said Gawain from behind him. “Have a change of heart?”

“No,” Lancelot said, quickly and maybe too defensively. “It was— you know, one of those schemes you like so much.” 

He felt Gawain loop his arms around his waist from behind and rest his chin on Lancelot’s shoulder. “Was it? I would be prepared to— hm— well, I was very taken aback, but I do love you. No matter what.”

“Ah— well I appreciate that but I promise I haven’t— you know— acclimated. I was trying to get us caught.” 

“Oh. That’s very— hm.” Gawain pressed a kiss to the nape of his neck. “You’re brilliant, love. Shall we head inside, grab the key, and get the hell out of here?”

“Before Lanval comes back with torches and pitchforks, yeah,” Lancelot smiled a little ruefully, turned to face Gawain and laced their hands together. “Thank you for— constancy, I suppose.” 

“You’re the constant one,” Gawain said, pulling him gently down the path back to the cottage. “I’m the— the one who can’t stay still. And the lucky one.”

The key was where they had left it, lying on the counter, with not a single stain to indicate where it had been found. Lancelot took it, and Gawain opened the door, and neither looked back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please comment you can marry BOTH of us
> 
> also yes there will be a part 2 we just want a break in between a;woeifweojif

**Author's Note:**

> if you comment you can claim either of our hands in marriage


End file.
